HappyThankYouMorePlease
Angelika Film Centre, March 27, 2011
Movie #20 for 2011
In general, I’m all for indie, navel-gazing movies. I have, several times in fact, been known to quite enjoy them. But HappyThankYouMorePlease is no Garden State, even if it’s writer/director/star JOSH RADNOR (How I Met Your Mother) is being hailed as the next Zack Braff (although, I’m not even sure what that means).
HappyThankYouMorePlease follows a loosely connected group of late 20something New Yorkers trying to “figure it out”. As far as storylines go it’s not bad, but it is a bit… nowhere. Despite an overabundance of plot - Radnor’s Sam gets his novel shot down, finds a young, artistically talented foster kid on the subway and takes him home whilst wooing a barmaid/cabaret singer (KATE MARA, 127 Hours); Sam’s best friend Annie (MALIN AKERMAN, Watchmen) nobly works in philanthropy, but has an autoimmune disease and an aversion to being adored until “Sam #2” (TONY HALE, “Arrested Development”) comes along; Mary-Catherine (ZOE KAZAN, Me and Orson Welles) is an artist working in a art supply store who fears her happy, healthy relationship with Charlie (PABLO SCHRIEBER, “The Wire”) might be over - there’s not actually a lot going on. It’s just really, really over-written.
None of the stories are more interesting than the others, but some of the actors sell it better. Kazan and Schreiber (pictured) are undoubtedly the highlight as they can cope with the idiosyncratically hyper-naturalistic writing that the others - Akerman in particular - seem to struggle with. In addition, Radnor’s character is obnoxious in a way that he clearly thinks is charming, and the women he has written are people I want to slap, with romantic sensibilities closer to a Hollywood mainstream rom-com than what I would expect from a New York indie navel-gazer written by the next Zack Braff.
