friday: underwhelmed by happy-go-lucky

Time Out - Mike Leigh and Sally Hawkins Interview - Photo 3, originally uploaded by sally-hawkins.com.

While most British publications and TV channels call Happy-Go-Lucky some sort of superlative comedy, I'm ready to bring the Dark Side of the latest Mark Leigh's offspring to your attention.

1. It is too long (2 minutes short of 2 hours).
2. It isn't as funny as the trailer suggests. Only a few scenes and dialogues are.
3. It isn't going anywhere: there is no plot, there is hardly any conflict, there is hardly any resolve and the main character stays unchanged.
4. There are no obvious depths to the main character, just a naive, one track approach to life.
5. There are scenes that do not add to the story (meeting the tramp, long walk in the street with classical music on the background—though I'd never thought I'd say this, too continental).
6. There are inconsistent cultural references: while a primary school teacher shopping in Camden would buy a plastic bracelet popular across Europe last year, she wouldn't buy a coffee mug from Liberty, would she?
7. The only highly conflictual scene is rooted in the least credible outbreak of the only negative character. It may be well acted, but still far-fetched.
8. It is predictable, which hardly ever goes down well with me.
9. It lacks the strength of Mike Leigh's Vera Drake (another long movie), though everyone praises him from having moved away from that bleak atmosphere.
10. Did I mention it is too long?

I'm sure I could add more, but these top of mind wrongs should build enough of a dark global picture. While on it, I must say: yes, Sally Hawkins does a good job of playing Poppy, I won't rise against her Silver Berlin Bear award. If anything, she was more convincing than when playing Anne Elliot in the ITV movie Persuasion.

I've seen that only a couple of months ago, last time I was in Romania. My mother loves zapping channels in search of something watchable and this is how we saw perhaps the second half of that one. I could tell from a mile that it was a Jane Austen novel. I couldn't tell, however, whether Sally's character was supposed to be ugly, which came through even more since she played next to Rupert Penry-Jones, the Adam Carter spy in the Spooks TV series from BBC.

Having seen Sally look good in photos, and then having seen her in Happy-Go-Lucky, too, I think directors love that unconventional beauty/ next door girl streak in her.

Update, May 24th 2008: there is some balance. My love loved this movie, and I love As Good As It Gets, so he got to watch the latter. He didn't like it, and his major complain was that characters aren't credible. My major complain would be, seeing it again ten years after, that it is too long/ slow. While I don't propose that the two movies have in common more than cinematic genres, I must remark, once again, that we appreciate rather different kinds of humour.