Watched: 11/30/2205
Format: Netflix
Viewing: First
Director: Vicky Wight
We watched Happiness for Beginners (2023) because Jamie had read the book and wanted to check out how it was turned it into a film. And because Jamie watches so much nonsense of my choosing, I wished to be flexible and watch a movie about Eat, Pray, Loving one's way through a long hike. Plus, Ellie Kemper is fun.
And, yeah, I am very glad Ellie Kemper got a movie as a lead and was able to show some star quality other than making mad bank as Kohl's Mom. I've mostly seen her play "wacky" and this wasn't really that. Here, she's a woman in her 30's who just wrapped up a divorce and decides to go on the aforementioned days-long hike on the Appalachian Trail.
Helen (Kemper) is accidentally joined by her younger brother's best friend, Jake (Luke Grimes) who accidentally also signed up for the same hike, and along the way she learns, laughs and loves, and the two hook up at the film's end. Shocker. (You will know this in the first five minutes of the movie. This is a spoiler only if you have amnesia that makes you forget how every movie, ever, worked.)
Unfortunately, aside from Kemper's energy and the honestly stunning outdoors scenery, the movie kind of never raises above a mediocre sitcom. It's a will they/ won't they question that will clearly resolve exactly one way. It doesn't know a sitcom cliche it doesn't want to exploit. While also introducing major character items and then ignoring them completely. Cumulatively, these things make the characters unbelievable and nearly unlikable.
It's the kind of movie where every time something is going to happen - an important conversation, a kiss, whatever... people are interrupted. Someone walks into frame, someone calls for them, etc... Which, fair, but the characters are in the woods with only one another for company. They do not teleport and travel through time from scene to scene - they have time and space to say the next thing they were going to say. It's almost confusing why they don't just let the interruption pass and then pick up again. At least in a workplace sitcom you assume they have to move on with their day.
I guess, fundamentally, I felt like this movie could have been an email. Like, just have these two have a conversation... all the delay isn't really entertaining.
But the characters will even self-interrupt. There's a scene where one of those two major character items shows up as Kemper explains how her middle brother died and how it destroyed her family (something which impacts nothing else in the movie and feels weirdly out of place), and after she's done - Man just says "we should get some sleep". Not "let me comfort you" nor does he ask any follow up questions. Just "we should get some sleep". And then starts a fight with her.
It's so weird.
The other thing is that SPOILERS we find out Man is slowly going blind. And is, in fact, night blind already. But it only impacts him one time, not all the time when it is dark, when he apparently can get around just fine without his glasses, which he almost never wears.
Most of the supporting characters are just sketches. When characters do say who they are, they must do it by interacting with Helen, in which case they stop the movie to explain their whole deal. It's wildly lazy writing of the tell-don't-show variety. The little character beats seem to want cheaply earned gravitas for the movie - but instead the beats just dump a paragraph of character bio that will never again be relevant or come up in a meaningful way.
The odd thing is that you can exactly triangulate how all of this happened.
The movie has a single writer/ director/ producer in Vicky Wight. While Netflix surely had final edit and some say, this is her baby. She's the one who wrote and directed a scene in which someone who has been pining for Kemper for a decade, and who took the crazy leap to spend time with her, gets interrupted when he's about to spill his guts, and then does not ask her to hold up so he could tell her instead of just standing there like an idiot while she slowly gets in her car and drives away.
Also, it does feel a little stalker-ish he followed her out to the woods. And why DIDN'T they just say they knew each other? It makes no sense, and if they stay in touch with anyone else after, they clearly will have to tell them. It's so weird and dumb.
And from what Jamie groused to me, the movie does what many an adaptation do: It uses the book as a rough outline, but so much is changed, it kind of changes the meaning from the original text (see: Frankenstein). This includes a massive reduction in the number of hikers, which causes logistical issues I kept asking about. "Why would you do that if you're on the Appalachian Trail?" type stuff, like having your trail guide split the group and then not follow up behind the first group, potentially losing hikers in the woods. Which absolutely happens.
The movie also forgets to do basic things like showing Helen blocking her ex from calling her as a sign of growth. She kind of just comes back ready to love her brother for reasons.
Anyway, it wasn't so much a problem of "not for me" as "this movie is badly written and is hoping the gorgeous scenery will distract me". The scenery did not distract me. This movie needed a few more drafts before the cameras rolled.
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