Movie Review – HappyThankYouMorePlease

HappyThankYouMorePlease (2010) – A group of 20-something friends struggle with the realities of actually having to grow up.  Each of them has to find their way out of their old understanding of love into something new.

Ten minutes into this movie I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like it.  Thirty minutes in I was thinking that it had a couple endearing qualities but I didn’t feel like it was going to pull it off.  An hour in and the endearing qualities had pulled into the lead and stayed there.  It never fully overcame its shortcomings but it minimized them enough to let all the good parts shine through.

This is Josh Radnor’s “coming out” movie.  After a leading role in the television hit “How I Met Your Mother”, he wrote, directed and starred in this one.  The problem that I had early on (and honestly most of the movie) is that his character, Sam Wexler, is exactly like the lead character in Sam’s novel.  He’s not really much of anything.  An outstanding short story writer, his novel just comes up short.  Radnor uses the concept beautifully later in the movie and I assume that the parallel between the two is intentional.  The problem is that we’re left with a leading man who is neither much of a lead nor much of a man.  When he first runs into and ends up stuck with a small African-American boy it really feels like a low rent version of “About A Boy”.  It also feels like a cheap, sentimental effort to redeem Sam’s character.

As the movie goes on you realize that Radnor has done two rather amazing things.  He’s made the female characters the most interesting people in the movie and he’s made his own character the most deeply flawed.  There are several parallel stories going on.  Annie (Malin Akerman) is trying to deal with her diagnosis of alopecia by keeping the world at arm’s length and making bad choices about men.  She eventually is pushed into seeing the guy right in front of her who is crazy about her.  Sam’s “cousin” (not really but one of those two families who are such close friends that they become family) Mary Katherine (Zoe Kazan is wonderful in this small role) is struggling with the reality that her longtime boyfriend wants to move to L.A., away from “home” in New York City.  They gently slog their way through some very real life conflict on their way to their new realization.  Sam meets Mississippi (that’s the character’s rather ludicrous name, and yes, that’s where she’s from.  Played by Kate Mara, whose singular good looks will hold your attention every moment she’s on the screen.  The character itself doesn’t have a whole lot of “there” there but she does a nice job with what she’s given), an aspiring singer who is not sure she really wants to be with him but let’s him convince her.  Meanwhile Sam is dealing with the kid in his life, Rasheen (Michael Algieri) who presents him with the recurring opportunity to make the wrong decision.  Of all the story lines this one is the weakest.  It’s cliché, it’s predictable and the payoff is both unremarkable and unlikely.

The real standouts here are Kazan and Tony Hale, who plays “Sam #2”.  This is the guy that is bound and determined to woo Annie.  Going from annoying nerd at the start of the movie he lands someplace so unexpected and wonderful that I won’t spoil it for you.  The movie ends with a slightly saccarine moral but one that you’re ready to love when it arrives.

Call it movie where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Rating – ***   Worth A Look