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Reviews
Happy Endings (2005)
Doesn't quite deserve the 6.9 it currently has on IMDb I'm afraid
Happy endings follows a range of people that are loosely connected to each other and tries to tell what is currently happening in their life. It all revolves around Charley and Mamie, a stepbrother and -sister. Mamie dates a mysterious Mexican immigrant and is confronted by a guy who says he has information about her son, which she gave a way for adoption after birth. Charley has a relationship with a man. We see them and their relationship with their best friends (a lesbian couple) evolve. We also meet Otis, who works at Charley's restaurant, and his father. They too have some relational troubles to go through and the movie picks up on that too.
Happy endings starts out really slow. Not much is happening for the first hour or hour and a half. The movie just describes a group of people and the issues they have in their relationships. While I didn't mind a slow pace in movies like 'lost in translation' or 'remains of the day', this movie's storyline simply wasn't interesting enough for me and perhaps lacked the subtleties of the two aforementioned movies to keep me entertained during the buildup of the story. It's one of those movies without real action, suspense and -although it's about relationships- even without a real romantic storyline. It just tries to tell a story (a couple of stories intertwined even) about a group of people and what's happening to them in a certain part of their life. I was kind of surprised to see it rated 6.9 currently on IMDb, usually the ratings really match my appreciation of a movie. In this case they didn't. I rated the movie a 6 and I hope the explanation above helps some of you decide if you want to see it.