Flixin’: Happythankyoumoreplease

There are a lot of movies about the young adult angst brought on by life in the Big Apple. Happythankyoumoreplease is a recent take on this tried-and-true formula, focused around six young and mostly creative minds trying to figure out the world in the busy city. And like many movies of its kind, Happy‘s script is so shallow and incoherent, you won’t remember it five minutes after you leave the theater. There are a couple of moments where Happy reaches for something more than a cookie-cutter ensemble love story-slash-quirky comedy, but they are needles in a haystack of conventional plot devices, lazy metaphors, and clunky storytelling.

 It’s too bad: director/star Josh Radnor (Ted Moseby of How I Met Your Mother) does a solid job directing, wringing what he can out of the limp structure and pacing of the story. He tries to make sense of the ridiculous premise and add some depth to the characters in front of the camera, but there just isn’t enough to work with. To top it off, the movie is based around a ridiculous presence that sucks the life out of every scene it appears in. On one hand, the movie is about these late-20 year olds trying to figure out what they really want from life and the people around them. Then, interwoven throughout, is the story of Sam (Radnor), who finds a foster child on a subway and houses him for a week illegally, although the threat of that kind of disappears at some point.

 That singular storyline completely kills your investment in any of the secondary characters introduced throughout, which thankfully is small, and contains some great young actors (oddly enough, fans of The Wire will get to enjoy the sight of Nick Sobotka, who is a main character). It contrasts very badly with this father/son storyline which doesn’t seem to provide much insight or conflict, and resolved in the same fashion. Top it off with happy endings for every character, and all you have is another low-budget film destined for the bargain bin.

 I hope Radnor finds himself a better script to direct, because he is more talented than your average actor who directs an episode of his own multi-camera sitcom. He has an eye for capturing more than a face displaying an emotion and speaking words; there are three or four moments in the film where simple, common camera shots became fantastic moments of personal exposition. Granted, they were easy to capture well (considering they were the small amount of moments where the film wasn’t either plodding or predictable), but I was impressed with his recognition of the few strong lines in the movie, giving them the room to breathe, in the presence of a script that valiantly tried to drown out any unique voices that might have crept into it.

 There isn’t much to Happythankyoumoreplease- the title alone gives away the optimism it tries to disguise through the first two acts. If you ignore the weird white father/black child storyline, Happy is a story about people unsatisfied with the norm, trying to reach for more but fearing the unknown. It might’ve had a chance if the writers wrote with the same uncertainty, instead of embracing the norms and cliches of the modern vanilla-flavored ensemble comedy. At one point, one of the characters says “I’m so tired of optimism… it’s fucking exhausting.” It’s said, and quickly abandoned ten seconds later. But that’s what I wish Happythankyoumoreplease was; an exploration of the ups and downs of optimism, not a gentle skip through the Park of Happy Love Endings.

Overall: D

 Characters: C

Plot: F

Production Values: C