Happiness

If you can get past the first 15 minutes, I think you might enjoy this film. Let's put that a different way. You might appreciate this film. It is absolutely not for the squeamish, dealing as it does with pedophilia, obscene prank phone calls, and social ineptitude of every size and shape. It is so immensely sad that any opportunity that Todd Solondz gives you to feel hope for his characters swells out of all proportion to what is actually happening on screen. In the case of one character, when something nice happens to her, the next moment she pays for it, and she's the meekest, kindest, sweetest character of them all. The one who shouldn't be paying for her "sins." The music is upbeat and happy at all times, and it doesn't take long before you learn not to trust the music whatsoever. You also learn not to trust what the characters will say one minute to the next. But you still end up empathizing with them. The most creepy instance of this is during a scene in which the pedophile is luring his prey with drugged food. The poor kid politely declines all the food. And towards the end of the scene you feel yourself rooting for the pedophile, because of the way the scene is constructed. After which you want to shake yourself like a dog and wonder if you're human. Solondz is clearly a major talent if he can create this world for us. I give him high marks, but I'm not sure if I'll venture to watch one of his films anytime soon.

year: 1998
length: 134 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0147612/combined