Tuesday, March 29, 2011

happythankyoumoreplease


This movie wanted to be good, and I wanted it to be as well, but in the end it is only half a movie. It falls in the trappings of conventional dram-ady styling's by lacking character development and storytelling for pretty faces. Happythankyoumoreplease is the debut from Josh Radnor as a Director and Writer on the big screen. He is mostly known for his character on "How I Met Your Mother". For Happythankyoumoreplease it has been nearly a year since it debuted at Sundance in 2010 and received the Audience Award over other solid entries such as "Blue Valentine" and "Winter's Bone". For some reason "Happythankyoumoreplease" never was picked up by a major studio for release and I am not even sure when it will get the wide release that it deserves. The movie is a snap shot into the lives of three couples that apparently are connected. The relationship that is created between Sam (Josh Radnor), Rasheen (Michael Algieri) and Mississippi (Kate Mara) is spontaneous and echoes the "short story" theme throughout the movie without being a one-night stand. Sam's best friend Annie (Malin Akerman) is the bird with a broken wing that is longing for true love. Finally, there is Mary Catherine (Zoe Kazan) and Charlie (Pablo Schreiber) who have very little relevance to the movie, but have the most genuine story. Some choppy writing brings their characters together, but it is the individual relationships that deserved to be highlighted. The sudden relationship between Sam and Rasheen was nice. You wanted to cheer for the two of them even though you knew what Sam was doing was against the law. Even as life's frustrations result in Sam dropping an "f-bomb" he has the decency to tell Rasheen not to curse. Sam means well and tells Rasheen to read lots of books and never stop drawing. This was quite possibly the most beautiful moment in the movie. You knew things were not going to end well, but you wanted to cheer for them. I want to say that the ending was unsatisfying trying to be artsy without telling the audience what will happen. With the number of loose ends surrounding Sam's character it would have probably taken another hour to properly do this. Perhaps the open-ended conclusion was just that... because in life things are never finished with a cute little bow. We jump in and out of each other's lives and sometimes we make a profound impact on someone but we miss it; or they make one to us and we long for it to happen again but never does. After seeing the movie, I think it became clear why it has struggled to get the wide release. It is certainly worth having its time in the theater and earns the 3 Quacks that I will give it. (screening date 3/28/11, release date UNKOWN, location Landmark E Street Cinema)

If you got this far, I guess I just want to say that I purposely didn't use paragraphs because the title is jammed together and thought it would be fun to do the same thing with the review. Please read other reviews, and let me know what you think.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...