Another Happy Day (2011)

Happy? Bah. Not likely, everyone in this Sundance-approved, dysfunctional-family drama is as miserable as it gets, from the harangued, protagonist mom, Lynn (Ellen Barkin), to her quiet, formerly-abusive ex-husband, Paul (Thomas Haden Church), and especially Lynn's smarmy, druggie teenage son (Ezra Miller). The movie, accordingly, is fairly miserable as well, although it's nearly rescued from the bottom of the art-house barrel by the brazen performances of its actors.  Barkin, Church, Miller and a whole family's worth of misfits, bottom-feeders, and head-cases are brought together, throughout the course of the movie, for the marriage of Lynn and Paul's son (Michael Nardelli), but matrimony is the last thing on this film's mind when putting such a bickersome crew together in the same room. What Another Happy Family does try to do, with varying degrees of success, is explore the inner workings of a sprawling, dysfunctional family, but it tries to do way too much in a short time span, and as we're bombarded with one horrifying family tale after another, after a while we just start to feel bad. The film feels simultaneously like a more abrasive version of Parenthood, and a less funny version of Modern Family, two network television shows that, it must be said, handle the ins and outs of a crazy family with much more skill and compassion for their characters than is displayed here. Writer/director Sam Levinson isn't so much making a movie as organizing a circus, and he does an admirable job of conveying the family's mutinous, self-destructive nature and the role each member plays in the creation of the whole. is on his deathbed. What he doesn't really do is try to garner sympathy for anyone, except potentially for Alice (Kate Bosworth), Lynn's self-abusing daughter who is more conspicuous by her absence than anything else, until the final act when she makes her entrance. A wisp of a thing with sunken cheeks, scraggly hair and the look of someone who's trying to fold in on herself and poof out of existence, Bosworth gives, far and away, the strongest performance of the movie (a close second, by the way, is Demi Moore, who goes full ham as the garish hoochie-mama that Paul has remarried).Levinson's script won the Waldo Wight Screenwriting Award at Sundance, and it's easy to see why: this is a movie that glorifies strong acting and an overarching message, but for all the working parts in it, Another Happy Day just doesn't operate well as a whole. Instead of plot movement, Levinson opts to repeat increasingly uncomfortable versions of the same set pieces: kid does drugs; grandpa looks like he's dead; aunts gossip over drinks; the granddaughter is nuts, and all of it framed by round after round of five-star waterworks by Barkin. The movie tries to say an awful lot in abstracts, so what we're left with is a kind of vaguely antagonistic notion of everyone involved, including and especially the beaten-down heroine we're supposed to be sympathizing with.None of this is on Barkin, who gives an awfully strong performance, but by the time Ellen Burstyn, who plays Lynn's mother, snaps at her to suck it up and keep her problems to herself, you kind of want to agree despite everything. There's something to be said for shades of grey, but does any of this sound happy to you? Yeesh.

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Happy Feet Two

Winner of several imaginary literary and filmmaking awards.

Happy Feet Two is bright, zany, rollicking, and not at all engaging. In fact, so focused is this spectacle of a sequel from Aussie director George Miller on inundating the audience with an incessant barrage of pointless madcap humor and sunny renditions of pop songs performed by tap-dancing penguins that it becomes quite alienating. I kept wanting the movie to give me more personal space.

The film's Oscar-winning predecessor, 2006's Happy Feet, followed the same uncomfortable model, preening shamelessly with its bubblegum pop music covers blended with well-intended but heavy-handed messages about environmental responsibility and 'let's-all-get-along' harmony among all people. It was undeniably weird but ambitious enough to attract a wide swath of supporters. But only the most ardent fan of toe-tapping penguins will likely go along with Happy Feet Two, which offers more of the same without narrative clarity or tonal focus.

While the first film told the story of Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood), whose unique dancing ability set him apart from the rest of his penguin race, the sequel focuses on the grown-up Mumble's son, Erik (voiced by Ava Acres), who hasn't inherited the Happy Feet gene. He is stuck in a bit of an early-life crisis, living in the shadow of his quick-stepping daddy and unsure if he has a unique gift of his own. His is just one of several bouts with male insecurity that are wrestled with in the film. Mumble himself is questioning his strengths as a father, while spicy sidekick Ramone (voiced by Robin Williams) searches desperately for female companionship, a dazzling "flying penguin" dubbed The Mighty Sven (voiced by Hank Azaria) grapples both with a fear of being eaten and a secret he keeps hidden from the masses, and tiny Will the Krill (voiced by Brad Pitt) yearns to break free from his pack of miniscule crustaceans and live life on a higher rung of the food chain.

That's a lot of disparate story segments for such an ostensibly simple dancing penguin picture, so much that each individual piece distracts from all the others rather than 'working in harmony,' as the movie's moralizing so clearly advocates. The film unfolds like a series of animated shorts about vaguely-connected characters, each episode capped with a cloying dance number. If there is one central "plot," I suppose it involves a glacial shift that segments a large portion of the penguin population, isolating them from both food and their loved ones. But even that often just seems like one in a series of B-stories fighting for attention in a movie afflicted with a case of cinematic ADHD.

Special mention should be made of the film's visual prowess, which is considerable. Miller, working with the teams at Animal Logic and Dr. D Studios, crafts a stunning digital world where the gleam of the snow and fluff of the fur feel startlingly real. The film is bright and beautiful to look at, expressive in every corner of the frame.

That expressiveness extends into the film's high-energy set pieces, which are at least ambitious in terms of scale and choreography. But those dance numbers feel like cheeky music videos, loosely strung together by thin mini-stories about one-dimensional characters. The lack of depth makes the bright and happy dancing feel like empty audience-pandering, and by the end I was more than happy to shuffle my feet straight to the exit.

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