I found this movie on a chance encounter with redbox while wanting to reward myself after a full week of working till 2am. The first thing I will say is that it has made me want to read the book, more so than the other films I have reviewed here. I won’t give reason’s I will just point out that the plot and theme of the film give it the upper hand against other action or drama movies. Not that I am only intrigued by the idea of search for happiness but being that the last book to film adaptation that made me want to read the book was Silver Linings Playbook, it must be that psychological subject matter can keep me indefinitely interested.
If you have seen the reviews of this film it may seem like I am coming to it’s defense. It came and went from the theater’s fairly un-noticed to DVD, possibly because it was released internationally. Most of the critics gave it low scores and on Rotten Tomatoes it has viewer reviews scoring double that of the average critic scores. I find it funny that action films like Lucy and more pertinent to this site, The Hunger Games, have double the critic scores than this film. I came up with the theory that critics want to help the movie companies recoup their money and feel offended when a movie comes along and challenges their intellect in anyway. Here’s a quote from my imaginary critic “I’m smart and have loads of credentials, why would I need help finding happiness”.
On to the review of the movie. I am a fan of Simon Pegg who play Hector, ever since Shaun of the Dead. He is the opposite side of the acting spectrum of actors like Gary Oldman who play different characters superbly. Simon Pegg again gives the same quirky, endearing, accident prone and comedic character he plays in the other handful of movies I have seen him in. Along side Rosemund Pike they make a believable couple.
Hector is a psychiatrist who decides he can’t help his patients without doing some research about the happiness himself. This spurns a search around the globe for happiness. Not to give away the movie but it has a minimum of twists and turns. It feels formulaic at times but that works in this case because to put it bluntly, why would you want to be confused about happiness, especially when we are paying to watch the search for it. Hectors search takes him to only 3 different main locations with a slew of supporting characters that help him jot over a dozen sayings about happiness in his notebook. I am sure the book contained many more places and characters.
I laughed out loud many times during this film, which is very rare for me even though I enjoy comedies. One of the places he visited on his search was a country in Africa, which I believe was left un-named. There he meets a drug lord, gets kidnapped and has near death experience which is a fairly cliché movie scene but I felt the need to mention it here because it was one of the many scenes that has been done in many films but was given it’s own requisite personality for this film.
Hector meets with old friends along the way, as well as new people who are drawn in by his cause. They inadvertently give him the inspiration he needs which is used in the end of the film. Overall, this movie was tastefully done, perhaps this is because as an internationally filmed and directed movie it has a different feel than most American films. I am sure, if you have read my other reviews, that you may have noticed I am very lenient on book to film adaptations. This is because I feel that since they are modeled from books they have a flair all their own and shouldn’t be classed or grouped together with films that aren’t. This movie is a perfect example of this, if you watch the movie you will see that while it prescribes to many of the cinematic themes and scenes we are used to, it does so with a panache that is pivotal to many art forms, a uniqueness and freedom that makes it ever so familiar.
