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HAPPY
ENDINGS
Mamie
(Lisa Kudrow) is being blackmailed by
aspiring moviemaker Nicky (Jesse Bradford).
He's found the son she gave up for adoption
20 years ago, but won't tell her where
to find him unless she agrees to let him
film the mother-son reunion for the sort
of weepy documentary he hopes could launch
his career.
Just
with that, Happy Endings has
enough plot for a twisty comedy-melodrama,
but writer-director Don Roos keeps a few
more cards up his sleeve. Mamie's current
lover is Javier (Bobby Cannavale), a Mexican
massage therapist. He suggests exploiting
Nicky's greed and maybe persuade him also
to make a documentary about
the sex commerce that goes on all around,
disguised as home massage for desperate
housewives. But that's not enough! Happy
Endings has no end of appetite for
sleaze.
Charlie
(Steve Coogan) and his longtime partner
Gil (David Sutcliffe) are on intimate
terms with another gay couple: Diane (Sarah
Clarke) and Pam (Laura Dern), who used
Gil as a sperm donor in a failed try at
insemination. But did it really fail?
Diane and Pam have a two-year-old boy
who--according to Charlie--is the spitting
image of Gil. Litigious Charlie is trying
to convince Gil to sue for paternity in
court.
Worse,
if possible, are the tangled affairs of
cabaret singer Jude (Maggie Gyllenhaal).
She seduces Otis (Jason Ritter), who claims
to be gay but is hiding it from his father,
Frank (Tom Arnold). Uncontrollable Jude
is kicked out of her apartment by a fed-up
cousin, so she blithely moves into Otis'
s vast, swimming-pool- equipped mansion
where she proceeds to seduce Daddy Frank
and then claim to be pregnant. The devil
knows by whom, but what the hell--it's
all in the family.
I
saw Happy Endings a few months
ago, so don't sue me if I confuse the
who-what-where involving these ten characters;
Roos does not help by nonchalantly throwing
them into a capriciously seasoned crockpot.
With such multiple story Short Cuts
to Magnolia, he probably
intends to prove that modern California
living is as unpredictable as his own
perfervid imagination.
Roos
shone brightly with The Opposite of
Sex but went into eclipse with Bounce,
which stayed in memory not much longer
than the romance its stars, Ben Affleck
and Gwyneth Paltrow, would like to forget.
Happy Endings is raunchier
and better than its predecessors; Roos
shot it in only 33 days and was able to
keep his game cast bouncing on the far
side of farce. Forget about common sense;
in this delirious company, it turns out
to be the least common of all senses.
Rene Jordan
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