There are spoilers in this review.
Let's see, where oh where have we seen this premise before: group of misfits rides into town, shakes up the backward townsfolk, and shows them that life is worth living. Sniff-sniff I smell another rehash of a plot older than time itself.
Happy, Texas is about two small-time crooks who masquerade as gay men to put on a `pageant' featuring little girls in a place called, improbably, Happy, Texas. Just why the town should spring for such an endeavor is never explained, and the end result is a `pageant' that only the parents of the girls would want to watch. I guess a bunch of little girls who sing off key and can barely walk, let alone dance, must be a source of civic pride somewhere in the United States. Typical of Hollywood films, there's at least one child who speaks like an adult and can throw a mean punch like a fifty-year old drunk, dropping a man ten times her weight (if you're a budding screenwriter, for God's sake please PLEASE don't ever write a character like this). There's also a masculine and forthright woman named `Joe' who runs the town bank, and by gum no one is going to tell her what to do. The prevailing notion among Hollywood screenwriters is that if you give the characters some quirky traits you can make them instantly loveable. Who cares about character development when you have a woman banker named `Joe'? The townspeople are broadly-painted caricatures of small-town bumpkins; I guess that's supposed to make them charming.
This film looks and feels so much like Raising Arizona that one wonders if there were some Coen brothers wannabes behind the production of this film, which is really sad because aside from Fargo, any Coen brothers film is largely unsatisfying. Happy, Texas, does not fail to leave the same lingering sense of unfullfillment.
There is no substance to this film. All the actors float over the scenes like two-dimensional cutouts, saying their lines and squinting as they practice their southern accents. There is no sense of urgency or habitation, and everyone seems so involved with themselves that they can barely acknowledge the existence of others. Many, many little self-involved soliloquies dot this film from start to finish as each character thinks the others want to know all about him. Someone please explain to me why Hollywood thinks that characters talking endlessly about themselves is not worse than its polar opposite: action movies where explosions occur every five minutes and the hero utters some inane catch phrase after dispatching twelve attackers.
Plot holes abound. Why did the guy go on the date with the sheriff, for instance? He could just as easily have turned him down. The dialogue is a howler. `There is nothing fuzzy about what I feel for you.' I think that line is from Shakespeare.
I recommend you avoid this tiresome video and find something else. Like the AOL disks you get in the mail, this DVD is suitable only as a coaster.
Let's see, where oh where have we seen this premise before: group of misfits rides into town, shakes up the backward townsfolk, and shows them that life is worth living. Sniff-sniff I smell another rehash of a plot older than time itself.
Happy, Texas is about two small-time crooks who masquerade as gay men to put on a `pageant' featuring little girls in a place called, improbably, Happy, Texas. Just why the town should spring for such an endeavor is never explained, and the end result is a `pageant' that only the parents of the girls would want to watch. I guess a bunch of little girls who sing off key and can barely walk, let alone dance, must be a source of civic pride somewhere in the United States. Typical of Hollywood films, there's at least one child who speaks like an adult and can throw a mean punch like a fifty-year old drunk, dropping a man ten times her weight (if you're a budding screenwriter, for God's sake please PLEASE don't ever write a character like this). There's also a masculine and forthright woman named `Joe' who runs the town bank, and by gum no one is going to tell her what to do. The prevailing notion among Hollywood screenwriters is that if you give the characters some quirky traits you can make them instantly loveable. Who cares about character development when you have a woman banker named `Joe'? The townspeople are broadly-painted caricatures of small-town bumpkins; I guess that's supposed to make them charming.
This film looks and feels so much like Raising Arizona that one wonders if there were some Coen brothers wannabes behind the production of this film, which is really sad because aside from Fargo, any Coen brothers film is largely unsatisfying. Happy, Texas, does not fail to leave the same lingering sense of unfullfillment.
There is no substance to this film. All the actors float over the scenes like two-dimensional cutouts, saying their lines and squinting as they practice their southern accents. There is no sense of urgency or habitation, and everyone seems so involved with themselves that they can barely acknowledge the existence of others. Many, many little self-involved soliloquies dot this film from start to finish as each character thinks the others want to know all about him. Someone please explain to me why Hollywood thinks that characters talking endlessly about themselves is not worse than its polar opposite: action movies where explosions occur every five minutes and the hero utters some inane catch phrase after dispatching twelve attackers.
Plot holes abound. Why did the guy go on the date with the sheriff, for instance? He could just as easily have turned him down. The dialogue is a howler. `There is nothing fuzzy about what I feel for you.' I think that line is from Shakespeare.
I recommend you avoid this tiresome video and find something else. Like the AOL disks you get in the mail, this DVD is suitable only as a coaster.