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Title: Happy Endings (2005)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Lisa Kudrow | ... | Mamie | |
| Steve Coogan | ... | Charley | |
| Jesse Bradford | ... | Nicky | |
| Bobby Cannavale | ... | Javier | |
| Maggie Gyllenhaal | ... | Jude | |
| Jason Ritter | ... | Otis | |
| Tom Arnold | ... | Frank | |
| David Sutcliffe | ... | Gil | |
| Sarah Clarke | ... | Diane | |
| Laura Dern | ... | Pam | |
| Hallee Hirsh | ... | Mamie at 17 | |
| Eric Jungmann | ... | Charley at 16 / Tom | |
| Kim Morgan Greene | ... | Connie Peppitone | |
| Rayne Marcus | ... | Annette | |
| Caitlyn Folley | ... | Lauren (as Caker Folley) | |
Three stories of Angelenos linked linearly by people associated with each are told. In story one, Mamie works as a psychologist at an abortion clinic, she, in addition to providing counseling, assessing mental fitness and thus approving or declining the request by potential patients for the procedure. This job is somewhat ironic as she purportedly aborted a pregnancy when she was seventeen, nineteen years ago. Her stepfather urged her to go through with the pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption, he, now dead, the only person in her personal life who knew that she went through with it. She is approached by Nicky, an aspiring filmmaker, who has proof of her son's identity, said son who threw such information away in no longer wanting to contact her. As his application for a scholarship to the AFI, Nicky wants to make a film on Mamie "discovering" her son. Not wanting to have her story splashed across a movie screen, especially as the biological father is still in her life and ... Written by Huggo
Don Roos wrote and directed this lively, sometimes poignant, but not especially funny comedy-drama centering around an abortion counselor's secret that she had given birth to her step-brother's baby when she was a teenager and quickly gave it up for adoption. In this role, Lisa Kudrow really excels with the writer-director's dryly observant style: she's loose but not flailing, inquisitive but not harping, apprehensive but not frightened. Kudrow (whose comic timing reminds one of Roseanne's in the early years of her TV sitcom) mixes a look of anxiety, despair, nervousness and anticipation with astonishing skill--even when her character is humiliated (or humiliates herself), Kudrow has a way of keeping all the flightiness grounded in some form of reality. Matching her, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Tom Arnold have some wonderful early scenes; she's a born user and a killer karaoke singer, while he plays the father of the gay 21-year-old drummer whom Gyllenhaal has already seduced and discarded. It's too bad we don't get more of this relationship, and also unfortunate that Roos covers up most of their dialogue with soundtrack music (it's a coupling which happens in montage). Roos plants little subtitles throughout the movie to help sort out who's-who, and this works to some degree (yet it's a relief when the device is momentarily given a rest). Some of the other story threads are dim (a couple of which center on gay men turning their homosexuality on and off like a light-switch), but Kudrow's work and Tom Arnold's natural, easy-going presence keep the film absorbing and often appealing. And nobody sings "Just the Way You Are" like Gyllenhaal. **1/2 from ****