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Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

If you are interested in a comedy about inferiority, loneliness, masturbation, stalking, divorce, pedophelia and rape then this is the movie for you. This is one cheery movie, all about family values. It is a story about people who long to connect with eachother, but struggle to understand eachother and therefore unfortunately "are alone together"... Director Todd Solondz has the unique ability to irritate the movie masses, because he dares hold up a mirror to all the hypocrisy of pretending to be better than you are. Todd Solondz dares to film all those taboos that are NEVER shown in the hollywood movies for the masses. That's why Todd Solondz'movies dont sell very well, but nevertheless are regarded as classics amongst filmcritics and moviegeeks.The movies by Todd Solondz are always about losers, psychiatrically disturbed people, who loathe themselves. And he makes us laugh about those twisted human shortcomings that can ruin relationships and families. In real life those ruined relationships and psychiatric illnesses are not funny at all, but in "Happiness" he makes comedy out of misery in a brilliant way. That is to say if you like black comedies, otherwise you will be bored or offended or both. Acting is great. Magnificent performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman. He is just hilarious. The story more or less starts with him being a phone stalker. He is depicted as a truly perverted evil man at the beginning. But as the story progresses more and more "normal" people around him, seem to be even more disturbed than he is. In the end the phone stalker is, (relatively speaking), the most sane and innocent of the whole bunch of characters that are seriously mentally ill. It may sound horrible to be able to laugh about so many human shortcomings, but it truly is a "cheery" movie. And brilliant, because not many directors can or dare to portray those shorcomings no one dares talk about.Lovely and hilarious soundtrack with a great "Happiness" end track by Michael Stipe from R.E.M. which was specifically written for this movie.

I liked Happiness in some weird way. This movie is really interesting to watch despite all those disturbing scenes it has. You just cant stop watching until it's done, you wanna see what's gonna happen next. For that alone I give it 9, but because of some nasty things in the movie, gotta lower the grade by 1.8+

This 1998 independent film "Happiness" clearly can be called a film that's different strokes for different folks! It looks at the lives in and out of different characters, mostly it examines what makes them happy when it comes life, relationships, and intimate pleasure. It centers around the struggle of three sisters first up is Joy(Jane Adams)who's just recently broke up with her boyfriend and now the only happiness she can find is teaching and working at her various jobs. Then second is the hot and sexy author Helen(Lara Flynn Boyle) who just might be in for a strange bedfellow in a guy who's a stalker type showing his love with obscene phone calls(a great and unknown role from the late Philip Seymour Hoffman). Finally number three is Trish(C. Stevenson) the rich housewife with a kid yet she has a secret monster for a husband a messed up shrink(Dylan Baker). Overall a film that explores the differences in intimate choice as the different and dark feelings of intimacy make many happy with satisfaction. Overall good character and thought study film.

I watched this movie when I was a film school student. It was brand new, hot out of distribution, and I'd heard of Todd Solondz as a filmmaker who dared to make "different" films, which I figured meant "superior." See, it worked as entertainment, the acting and photography was fine. And yeah, it WAS "different." A pedophile is shown in a sympathetic light. Some fat loser uses his own jizz to stick pictures to the wall of his tiny studio apartment. Yeah, that's different. But what was the point in showing us all this sh*t? And why is it even entertaining to watch? Because the movie conditions me to think that this is reality, and that I should join the director in being comfortable with reality. Like, if these sick situations are so common that all these people are having them at once, then I should be cool with it and be a little proud of how this movie enlightened me.It's scary how they pulled this off. Young and impressionable, I ignored how disgusting and bereft of meaning this movie was because it LOOKED good and I understood it was "hip." I ate it up and almost fifteen years later, the foul aftertaste still lingers in the back of my mind.Ugh. Everything's propaganda now. I have had my share of sickness, and this movie isn't "groundbreakingly truthful," I think it's the director trying to convince everyone else of his deeply cynical and unrealistic view of middle- class America. Also, I don't know how this would play out in reality, but I doubt that a little boy getting sodomized by a grown man during a drugged stupor would just wake up the next morning without being being very upset and in a lot of pain. Exploiting child rape and trying to pull it off like it's dark comedy, there should be a name for that. Something that means "vapid and often offensive bullsh*t masquerading as having substance." I think "hipster crack" is a good enough term. There's just something off about it, something fake, something truly sick and immature. Like a friendly kid who wears expensive clothes and has lots of cool stuff, but when you visit his house he wants to play by torturing cats.