| Product Summary | | Publisher: Trimark | | Format: DVD | | UPC: 00031398826620 | | Buy.com Sku: 40221347 | | Item#: VRV3KY | | Category Keywords: Satire Theatrical Release | | Rating: Unrated |
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Features: DVD
The search for happiness connects lonely lives in this subversively funny new film from Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse). Meet three sisters at the center of a struggle with the secret demons of middle class perfection. There's Joy, who is rebounding from a break-up with her latest loser boyfriend (Jon Lovitz); Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle), a glamorous writer looking for drama in a relationship with a slovenly obscene phone caller (Philip Seymour Hoffman); and then there's Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), the housewife who appears to have it all, including a shrink husband (Dylan Baker) who has a secret obsession which he manages to hide from his family and friends.System Requirements:Starring Jane Adams, Elizabeth Ashley, Dylan Baker, Lara Flynn Boyle, Ben Gazzara, Jared Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jon Lovitz, Camryn Manheim, Rufus Read, Cynthia Stevenson Directed by Todd Solondz Running time: 140 minutes Copyright Lion's Gate 2003Format: DVD MOVIE
"Subtly savage... Evilly funny!" Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"#1 film of the year!" Newsweek Magazine
"Deeply disturbing and shockingly funny, one of the few indelible movies of the year!" David Ansen, Newsweek
Editor's Note
Building on the darkly comic angst of WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, Todd Solondz's HAPPINESS conveys suburban desperation and frustration on a larger scale than his previous film. The ensemble cast of characters centers around the lives of three sisters: Joy (Jane Adams), an awkward, naive, and unlucky musician; Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle), a beautiful, self-obsessed writer; and Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), a conservative housewife who is married to Bill (Dylan Baker), a psychiatrist harboring an unhealthy fascination for young boys. Other dysfunctional characters include the sisters' unhappy parents, Lenny and Mona Jordan (Ben Gazzara and Louise Lasser), and the lonely, sex-obsessed Allen (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who lives next to Helen and goes to Bill for therapy.| |At once both scathingly funny and shockingly bleak, HAPPINESS addresses subjects that most films are afraid to touch, including pedophilia and masturbation. Unapologetic and unflinching, Solondz's film features bold performances from the entire cast and makes for uneasy but intriguing viewing as it peers behind the fragile facade of the American dream.
Plot Summary
HAPPINESS fleshes out its grim stories through graphic portraits of aberrant relationships and individual obsessions. The film, centered around three sisters who struggle with the monotony of bourgeois life, leaves the viewer both laughing and gasping, hopelessly reaching for explanations for the behavior of the characters and the cruelty of their uncompromising circumstances. Pedophilia and dark sexual and psychological fantasies are featured as director Todd Solondz (WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE) drags each player in this brightly colored yet depressing party to the brink of their insecurities with marvelous precision and without qualm. The strong cast features Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Baker, Lara Flynn Boyle, Ben Gazzara, and Louise Lasser.
| Features | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | Audio: English Dolby Surround | | Widescreen Version | | Cast/Crew Bios | | Interactive Menus |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Trimark |
| Release Date: 6/3/2003 |
| Running Time: 139 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1998 | | Catalog ID: 8266-S | | UPC: 00031398826620 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English [CC], English | | Available Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | 1.85:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Golden Globe (1999) | | | Todd Solondz, Nominee, Best Screenplay - Motion Picture |
| Memorable Quotes| "It's good that we had this talk. Before things went too far...you know, got too serious."----Joy Jordan (Jane Adams) to Andy Kornbluth (Jon Lovitz) |"Yeah...(long pause]...are you sure?"----Andy |"Yes."----Joy |"Is it someone else?"----Andy |"No, it's just you."----Joy | | "I bore people. People look at me and get bored. People listen to me and they zone out. Bored. 'Who is that boring person,' they think. 'I have never before met anyone so boring.'"----Allen (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to his therapist Bill Maplewood (Dylan Baker) | | "I'm just so tired of being admired all the time."----Helen Jordan (Lara Flynn Boyle) to her sister Trish Maplewood (Cynthia Stevenson) | | "Well, I may 'have it all' [makes quote marks in the air] but, you know, sometimes I wonder what my life might have been like if I'd actually tried to write a novel."----Trish to Helen |"I'm sure it would've been good."----Helen | | "Don't feel guilty."----Diane Freed (Elizabeth Ashley) to Lenny Jordan (Ben Gazzara), after they've kissed |"I don't. I don't feel anything."----Lenny | | "We all have our pluses and minuses..."----Allen to Kristina (Camryn Manheim), after she's confessed to a heinous crime | | "So was Mrs. Paley sick, honey?"----Trish to her son Billy (Rufus Read) |"Well, everyone said she was just too strung out..."----Billy |"Now why do people say things like that?"----Trish|"Because she's a drug addict."----Billy | | "I'm not laughing at you...I'm laughing with you."----Helen |"But I'm not laughing..."----Joy |
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| | Professional Reviews | Sight and Sound
"...HAPPINESS stretches its taboo subject matter to the limits..." 03/??/1999 p.44Rolling Stone
"...Unique and unmissable....HAPPINESS is potently funny and painfully affecting, often at the same time..." 10/29/1998 p.80 Entertainment Weekly
"...Tender, shocking, cathartically honest....Solondz leaves us giddy....Breaks through to haunted levels of erotic compulsion that place it close to the hypnotic artistry of BLUE VELVET..." -- Rating: A 11/06/1998 p.56 Box Office
"...A superb black comedy....HAPPINESS leaves viewers feeling disturbed, amazed, and fascinated..." 07/01/1998 p.126 Premiere
"...[A] marvelous, multifaceted, and endlessly unsettling third feature....[Solondz is] an imaginative, witty, and deeply subversive filmmaker..." 11/01/1998 p.32 Los Angeles Times
"...Solondz has an impeccable ear for current speech patterns....He also has a gift for skewering self-centeredness..." 10/16/1998 p.C1 Total Film
"...Blackly comic, yet touching and sympathetic, it never flinches in its depiction of human darkness..." 07/01/2003 p.137 Dallas Observer 9 of 10
Weaving together myriad interconnected plot lines with more than a dozen lives, this gifted writer-director (Todd Solondz) has fashioned a bleak, brilliant comedy about loneliness, lovelessness, and alienation--a film that constantly upends our assumptions about what is heartbreaking, what is hilarious, and what is both. - Bill Gallo
New York Times 9 of 10
In Happiness, a much bigger film than his first (Welcome To The Dollhouse) and another murderous comedy of manners, Mr. Solondz gets even closer to the bone. His natural tendency to make audiences squirm leads him into material that wouldn't be mentioned in many other films; here, it's linked to the eating of ice cream sundaes. But Mr. Solondz doesn't seem to be straining for shock value when he turns the man in the sunny family portrait on the wall into the man who drugs his family's dessert. (His purpose: an assault on the son's young friend.) He fills Happiness with enough misery to make its most outrageous joke its title--and with enough true, unexpected tenderness to warrant this view of the world. - Janet Maslin
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