Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) Reviews

• A cheerful film with an underlying vein of tragedy

  lexo17702008-05-01

  Happy-Go-Lucky has been reviewed in the British press as a relatively lightweight Mike Leigh movie, but I'm not so sure. The story revolves around Sally Hawkins' remarkable performance as primary school teacher Poppy Cross, a highly unusual character in that Hawkins and Leigh between them manage to make her consistently cheerful and optimistic without being either naive or irritating. Poppy is presented as both relentlessly cheery and, on another level, remarkably intuitive; throughout the film, she has a series of encounters with troubled male figures (a boy in her class who has started bullying, a very strange homeless Irishman and, above all, her phenomenally uptight driving instructor Scott) and in all of them, Poppy's liveliness and friendly curiosity about other people is seen to be a powerful counter to male self-pity, anger and despair. Hawkins' character is not someone who is inclined to let life get her down, so it's just as well that she is surrounded by people with a somewhat more sardonic or downbeat take on reality. Her flatmate Zoe (Alexis Zegerman, very good) is a wonderfully dry and sarky counter to Poppy's enthusiasm, although the affection between them is palpable. Poppy's younger sisters Suzy and Helen are also quite different; Suzy is a law student who is more interested in clubbing, drinking and playing with her brother-in-law's Playstation than in criminal justice, while Helen is heavily pregnant, obsessed with acquiring the trappings of a respectable suburban life and unable to understand how her older sister can be so happy living in a rented flat and not stepping onto the property ladder. The big surprise for me is that I had been led to believe that this is a more or less straightforward feelgood film. It isn't. Scott, Poppy's driving teacher (Eddie Marsan), is the most affecting character in it, and one of the greatest and most unforgettable characters in Leigh's oeuvre. Most of the reviews I've read of the film depict Scott as a hateful, sinister or otherwise despicable character, but although it's true that he is an uptight, judgmental, angry bigot, it is also perfectly clear from his first appearance that he doesn't know what he's talking about and that he is driven by emotional problems that he hasn't even begun to get a handle on. Marsan's extraordinary performance is one of the best things I've seen on film for a long time. Scott has been afflicted with very bad teeth and a mild speech defect (he can't really say the letter 'r') and although his inner anger and bigotry is played for laughs for a lot of the film, in the end it is allowed to blossom forth in a riveting scene where his fury, jealousy and terror of his own darkness spill forth in a heartbreaking and riveting torrent. If part of the point of art is to help us to understand people we would otherwise have little sympathy with, then this film is a work of art. I've never seen Marsan before but he deserves awards for this movie, no question. Happy-Go-Lucky is a highly enjoyable and often very funny film, but it also carries terrible sadness. I have never been a massive fan of Mike Leigh, but lately I have to admit that I was wrong. He just seems to get better and better.

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• Wisdom, not naivety

  DaSchaust2008-07-12

  Having read some critiques to the extent that this was a film about a naive, childish woman who refused to take life seriously, I was hesitant whether I'd be able to bear this movie. Luckily, it turned out to be one of the most entertaining cinema experiences since quite a long time. Poppy isn't the person refusing to become an adult which her misanthropic driving instructor Scott accuses her to be. Our time indeed seems to bring about such people but they could hardly be more different than this lovely young woman. The first scene, with the girls drunk and chatting nonsense, is perhaps a bit misleading on this issue. (In fact, several people left the cinema during this scene, seemingly annoyed of all the giggling.) Rather, Poppy is wise and strong, trying to see the positive in everyone and everything. Humour, and sometimes benign derision, are her ways of keeping sulkiness out of her life. But, as everyone with a heart should feel, that is a gift, not a deficit. What damage can it cause to have a nice word or a smile for your fellow humans? On the other hand, she doesn't shut her eyes on the sad sides of life, such as a traumatized homeless man or a boy beaten by his mother's new partner, and one understands that she is deeply sad about not being able to help Scott, even if she would have had every reason to simply hate him for his bad temper, his racism and his stalking. The director has done a superb job with this production; it is packed with intelligent, witty dialogs and convincingly drawn characters. Our world needs a lot more people like Poppy, or at least -- if they don't possess her strength and optimism -- people who are sympathetic with her values instead of feeling threatened by humaneness. Yes, life is difficult and often sad, so let's tackle it with a smile!

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• Maybe the world is too much for even the most dedicated optimist?

  seawalker2008-04-23

  Some UK critics have been saying that "Happy-Go-Lucky" is the happiest and most cheerful movie that Mike Leigh has ever made. Well, I don't know if I would exactly agree with that. It is and it isn't. Sally Hawkins' primary school teacher Poppy is, indeed, a very happy individual. Annoyingly happy, insanely cheerful, depressingly optimistic and psychotically 'Up!', most of the time. It is a tribute to Sally Hawkins performance that, once you get past the initial irritation with her, you completely fall in love with Poppy, her goodness, her openness and, yes, her simple niceness. Then there is Eddie Marsan's driving instructor Scott. Scott is the very antithesis of happy. Scott is rigid, angry, frustrated, impatient, knotted up and racist. A borderline OCD sufferer, who is tortured by who-knows-what in his past. Scott is the most bitter and overwhelming character in a Mike Leigh film since David Thewlis' Johnny in "Naked". It is a towering performance by Eddie Marsan. If Poppy is the light, Scott is definitely the dark, but it seemed to me that dark shadows inhabit the whole of "Happy-Go-Lucky". The unhappy schoolboy, the glum Sister, the other sister - a social climber who dominates her husband. Little vignettes of irritation and annoyance. Typical Mike Leigh. "Happy-Go-Lucky" is a really good film, if you stick with it. I liked the way that Poppy does stop smiling towards the end. Maybe the world is too much for even the most dedicated optimist?

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• Unhappy Go-Plot less

  j-lacerra2010-06-25

  Happy Go-Lucky follows the apparently insane and moronic Poppy, played by Sally Hawkins, through a few weeks of her eventful yet curiously uneventful daily life. Poppy is always annoyingly happy, yet can't seem to zero in on any real aspects of life. This movie has absolutely no plot. It is a series of unrelated and unexplained encounters centering on one annoying (really annoying!) character. Nothing is explained or important to the plot, because the movie has none. Some of the things that happen to and with Poppy are: 1. Her bike is stolen, to which she reacts with a half-smile and snarky comment to herself. 2. She enjoys the trampoline. No further explanation. 3. She goes to a doctor for back pain and he manipulates her back. No further mention is made of the pain or the doctor. 4. She gets driving instructions from a borderline maniac with no patience. But she neither follows his instructions (to wear proper shoes, etc.) nor shows any regard for what they are doing. 5. It is hinted that she and her roommate have a lesbian relationship, but it is never brought into specific relief. 6. She has an encounter with a deranged homeless man, but nothing further is shown. Poppy seems to be perpetually chuckling to some private inner joke that she does not share with the world or the viewer. So, with no story and no endearing characters, no particular point and no resolution of her eternally off-putting good mood, this movie is less than an non-entity; it is downright painful to endure. To make matters worse, it seems unusually long. Avoid at all costs!

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• Hey, Poppy, if you REALLY want to make everybody happy...

  twohoursofmylife2010-09-27

  (as you claim)... how about you start by actually listening to people, respecting them, and interacting with them in a manner that would make THEM happy, rather than behaving like an insipid, childish, self-indulgent ninny with a chronic compulsive giggle and snark problem, who expects the whole world to behave like one gigantic amusement park, designed with one goal in mind: to entertain you? Like several other reviewers of this movie, I signed up with IMDb just so that I could review this horrid movie. I'd like to warn away any potential viewers who have more than one brain cell intact. This movie has nothing to say about real life, or about the real drama that each of us faces in going through life while balancing a desire for happiness with an awareness of and empathy for the challenges faced by each of us personally, and all of us globally. Aside from the insanely irritating main character and the more complex, profoundly flawed, and yet sadly sympathetic driving instructor, the rest of the characters are drawn with about as much depth as a cartoon sketch in the Sunday funnies. The "love" story between Poppy and the social worker? Come on. The coo-coo "your eyes are so gorgeous" business on their first date made me want to puke. I guess I shouldn't have expected any more of a coherent conversation topic from Poppy, who had already been exposed as an air-headed idiot - but I thought at least her date, a social worker, would have been given something more scintillating to say as an opening gambit. (Then again, I would have thought that a social worker who comes to a school to visit a troubled little boy would have brought his own sheet of paper for the boy to draw on...) I loathed this movie - absolutely loathed it. The only reason I watched this ghastly thing through to the end was that I hoped - in vain - that the eternally annoying, infantile, and selfish Poppy would eventually be confronted with someone or some situation that would cause her to reevaluate her approach to life, and then to go back and apologize to each person that she had irritated with her outrageously inane behavior. Save yourself the two hours - this lame excuse of a movie isn't worth it.

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