"Misanthropic, Nihilistic Moralizing"
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What You Need To Know:
HAPPINESS takes a nihilistic look at life and the cruel ways that people treat those of us who are nerdy and/or overweight. It is a misanthropic, mocking exercise that self-righteously moralizes about people whom the writer and director Todd Solondz clearly hates. Ironically, it seems that Solondz clearly hates himself because, like several of the movie’s characters, he too is a nerdy-looking young man. There is hardly anything in this movie that is spiritually, morally, artistically, or even socially redeeming
Content:
(HHH, PaPaPa, LLL, VVV, SSS, NNN, AA, DDD, HoHoHo, M) Nihilistic worldview with strong humanist & pagan elements combined with graphic sexual references; 30 mostly strong obscenities & 1 mild profanity & crude, frank talks about sex; man shoots people in park in dream sequence, woman kills rapist by snapping his neck & says that she cut up his body afterwards & woman appears with black eye in scene of implied beating; one scene of depicted fornication, one scene of depicted adulterous fornication, one fully-clothed scene of depicted rape that ends in depicted second-degree murder & implied mutilation, several scenes of depicted & implied masturbation, implied homosexual pedophilia, & father has frank sexual talk with son about masturbation & homosexual pedophilia; upper female & male nudity in fornication scene & men in underwear; alcohol use & abuse; smoking & pedophile drugs family so he can abuse drugged boy; man says he likes lesbians, many references to homosexual pedophilia & one scene of simulated masturbation involving homosexual pedophilia; and, miscellaneous immorality such as man desires separation with wife of 40 years, family dysfunction, people mistreat people because of their looks, & people live in lost, secular, nihilistic dream world, trying to find happiness without God.
More Detail:
The independent movie world seems to be filled these days with idiosyncratic, nerdy filmmakers whose goal in life seems to be to shock and destroy rather than to entertain and/or enlighten. Despite a somewhat worthwhile first effort with WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, iconoclastic writer and director Todd Solondz has traveled further down this road than many of his peers in the recently-released HAPPINESS. The NC-17 rating, the harshest rating given out by the Motion Picture Association of America, will not prepare audiences for the perverted, disgusting characters and subject matter that this movie depicts.
Filled with frank talk about masturbation, homosexual pedophilia, sex, and human mutilation, HAPPINESS portrays the lives of a bunch of losers searching for happiness. Their lives of quiet desperation lead to perverted sexual fantasies, perverted sex acts, auto-eroticism, and implied sexual abuse of a young boy after he has been drugged.
Much of the movie focuses on a married psychiatrist who is a homosexual pedophile; his two unmarried sisters-in-law; and, his 11-year-old son with whom he has frank, explicit talks about sex. The pedophile’s wife, a stay-at-home mom, thinks she is living in married bliss. She clearly feels superior to her sisters, especially the one who is a homely young spinster looking for Mr. Right.
Living next to the other sister, a beautiful, successful poet, are two overweight single people. Both feel unloved. One of them is a mousy man who makes obscene phone calls while masturbating. The other is a shy woman who is trying to attract the attention of the obscene phone-caller.
Quick, furtive sex and masturbation seems to be the only happiness these people seek, and the only happiness they seem to find. The movie ends in nihilism, despair, obscenity, and vulgarity when the psychiatrist is caught and his son is finally able to complete his sexual desires.
It is not just the evil subject matter that director Solondz puts into his movie that is bothersome. It is the nihilistic, misanthropic way in which he portrays it. Judging by press photos of him, Solondz is himself a nerdy, unloved loser who seems to be angry at the world for its rejection of him. Instead of trying to sympathetically depict the cruelty from other people that many nerdy and/or overweight people must suffer, and giving his audience ways to rise above the cruelty, whether or not through God, Solondz wallows in the filth in a realistic, but satirical way. It is a misanthropic, mocking exercise that self-righteously moralizes about the characters it portrays. Solondz clearly hates these people.
Ironically, it seems that Solondz also clearly hates himself because he too is a nerdy-looking young man. His movie also seems to hate the life that God has given human beings. There is hardly nothing in this movie that is spiritually, morally, artistically, or even socially redeeming. The movie also includes a violent dream sequence that may eventually spark another real-life crime by a young person, as did another movie last year.
Hopefully, people will not only complain to the distributor of this junk, a New York firm called Good Machine, but also complain to the pseudo-intellectual critics who invariably can’t get enough of this kind of movie. Also, people may want to write a note to Universal and October Films and praise them for turning down the distribution of HAPPINESS. Finally, weep for America, and weep for its children, that such material even gets made. Then, pray and help support MOVIEGUIDE and The Christian Film & Television Commission’s efforts to redeem the values of the mass media of entertainment.
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