Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

SnoopyStyle It's 1983 Los Angeles. Mamie Toll is 17 and her mother marries a rich restaurant chain English guy. She has sex with her new stepbrother Charley Peppitone and later supposedly gets an abortion. Nineteen years later, Mamie (Lisa Kudrow) is a divorced abortion counselor dating masseuse Javier (Bobby Cannavale). Charley (Steve Coogan) runs the only restaurant left over from his father and he's gay now with Gil (David Sutcliffe). Gil's lesbian high school friend Pam (Laura Dern) and her partner Diane (Sarah Clarke) have a son Max and Charley starts to suspect the paternity. Restaurant worker Otis (Jason Ritter) is a closeted gay from his father Frank (Tom Arnold) and dealing with his band singer Jude (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Manipulative filmmaker Nicky (Jesse Bradford) tries to blackmail Mamie for $25k to give the present name of her son who she didn't actually abort.The characters are all interconnected in modern familial ways. There are probably too many characters and stories. The stories meander in sometimes usual ways. I like some of the acting. Tom Arnold surprises me by doing real acting. I don't particularly like the closing texts for each character. It becomes more or less like a laundry list of their futures. That only accentuates the problem with this movie. Every character has to have a plot and I am suppose to care about them.

D_Burke "Happy Endings" is not a bad movie by any means, but it's also not a great movie. It has moments of brilliance, but is an overall uneven film which tries, and fails, to bridge the gap between three different stories being told in one film. So overall, I heard some good reviews by top critics on this film, but I personally didn't get it. It was just okay to me.Among the three stories being told, there is a primary one involving Lisa Kudrow's character and her massage therapist Javier, played by Bobby Cannavale, who frequently gives her a full body massage. The introduction to this plot point was a bit off putting for me, since the "Happy Ending" full body massage initially looked like rape. Although Lisa Kudrow was great in this movie, and can play a no nonsense woman just as well as the ditsy blonde Phoebe she became famous for on "Friends", that one scene could have been shot and choreographed better.However, once the wannabe documentary filmmaker, played well by Jesse Bradford, enters the film, this subplot begins to get interesting. Bradford is also a good actor, and he's funny as a guy whose ambition far exceeds his talent. He brings a lot of color into the film, and I think he has a bright future ahead of him.Easily the most brilliant subplot of the movie involved Maggie Gyllenhaal's character, and how she's a sex fiend who really bounces from man to man. Her love affair with the closeted gay character played well by Jason Ritter was well done, and her scenes with Tom Arnold were equally great. In fact, this movie is easily Tom Arnold's best performance to date. Arnold is known mostly for his comic acting, but his performance blew every movie he ever did out of the water. He's a very good actor if he sets his mind to a good movie. Seeing Gyllenhaal and Arnold in a scene made me wish the movie had just been about them.Perhaps the weakest subplot involved the two gay couples, two males and two females, and the link between the two females' son. What happens is that the man played by Steve Coogan is suspicious that the son is actually the son of his partner through artificial insemination, even though the female couple claimed the A.I. didn't work. It's not a confusing subplot, but one that doesn't really tie in with the other two stories being told. You ultimately find out that Steve Coogan's character got Kudrow's character pregnant as a teen, but that additional connection doesn't really go anywhere. It maybe could have made a good plot to another movie, or perhaps to a sitcom episode. As a subplot, though, it was decidedly weak only because it tied in poorly with the rest of the film.So two subplots out of three ain't bad, as they say. This movie was saved by especially great acting from Lisa Kudrow, Jesse Bradford, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and most surprisingly Tom Arnold among others. It had nice touches too, such as the subtitles which occasionally appeared to humorously discuss subplots a bit too complicated to show. However, when you have three major stories being told, the basic rule that should be followed is that they should be tied together in significant ways. The tie ins were not significant enough to me, but the film is recommended for acting alone.

achilled1 ---I'll just present the beginning of the stories,not the entire plots(like in the rear side of a DVD-box) and my considerations about this movie.Three very nice stories about gay couples and unwanted kids. -Two gay couples (two men and two women:Laura Dern and Sarah Clarke;Steve Coogan and David Sutcliffe) are contending a kid. -Mamie (Lisa Kudrow) is looking for her unwanted kid who had when she was sixteen,with his step brother Charlie (Steve Coogan again) -A girl (Maggie Gyllenhall) is temporarily the singer of a young band:the drummer is the richest one. Actually,the three stories are very,very hard to present because are very complex and matched one to the other:but it's also a very good element of this movie. Lisa Kudrow,Steve Coogan and Maggie Gyllenhall give their best in this movie. The younger actors are talented. The only thing I didn't like is the beginning:the crash of Mamie.I think it's useless. If you like alternative love stories,you better watch it!

Media_queer I would expect nothing less from a Donn Roos/Lisa Kudrow collaboration than the wonderful film that Happy Endings is. The characters are real. There's no "good guy" or "bad guy" -- there are just honest portrayals of how everyone has issues, secrets, lies, dreams, doubts and agendas.Kudrow is stellar as Mamie, a lost soul of a person who commands a simple dynamism. Maggie G is amazing, she totally "gets" who Jude is and wows us with a great performance. All of the acting is top-notch, as is the story, though I longed for more of a confrontation between Charley and Gil, but maybe that's a reflection of my own issues with cheating. Oh, and Jason Ritter is hella hot! Rent this, add this to your NetFlick queue, buy this used or new -- just see it!