This page was created on June 17, 2005
This page was last updated on September 6, 2005

—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections

Dial up modems will take a few moments

Directed by Don Roos
Written by Don Roos

Cast (in credits order)
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
Caker Folley .... Lauren
Amanda Foreman .... Lane
Nicole Tocantins .... Tess
Mark Fite .... Tess's Drunk Husband
Soledad St. Hilaire .... Dignora
Ramon De Ocampo .... Alvin
A.J. Trauth .... Bill
Carole Androsky .... Naked Woman
Tamara Davies .... Shauna
Ashleigh Darkbloom .... Rain
Emma Hunton .... Becca
T.R. Hopper .... Chuck Peppitone
Rob Macie .... Steve the Lawyer
Johnny Galecki
Ray Liotta
Anna Shemeikka .... Nude Body Double Maimee

Produced by
Bobby Cohen .... co-producer
Mike Elliott .... executive producer
Ali Forman .... co-producer
Jon Kuyper .... line producer
Nicholas Meyer .... executive producer
Tom Ortenberg .... executive producer
Michael Paseornek .... producer
Marc E. Platt .... co-producer
Laura D. Smith .... associate producer (as Laura Smith)
Mike Upton .... executive producer
Holly Wiersma .... producer

Cinematography by J. Clark Mathis
Film Editing by David Codron

MPAA: Rated R for sexual content, language and some drug use.
Runtime: 128 min
For rating reasons, go to FILMRATINGS.COM, and MPAA.ORG.
Parents, please refer to PARENTALGUIDE.ORG

Happy Endings [SOUNDTRACK]

Mamie is being blackmailed. This filmmaker named Nick claims to know Mamie’s son – the one she gave up for adoption – but Nick won’t introduce her to him unless he can film the reunion. Enter Javier, Mamie’s massage therapist boyfriend, who convinces Nick to film him instead. Now they’re all making a movie about massage. And ‘happy endings’…

Charley has a longtime boyfriend named Gil. Their best friends, Pam and Diane, once tried using Gil as a sperm donor. They said his sperm didn’t take, but Charley thinks those control-freak lesbians are lying. Pam and Diane’s two-year-old son looks exactly like Gil. And it’s time to set the record straight…Jude is pissed. Not at anyone in particular. Just in general. When her cousin kicks her out of the house, Jude shacks up with Otis, who’s still trying to convince his father, Frank, that he’s straight. Frank’s a widower. And he’s rich. So Jude decides to sleep with him, too. Really. The last thing she expected was to fall in love…

Just when you thought you knew everything about love and dysfunction, along comes HAPPY ENDINGS, Lions Gate Films’ hilarious and heartfelt new comedy by writer/director Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex, Bounce). Featuring a talented ensemble cast that includes Tom Arnold, Jesse Bradford, Bobby Cannavale, Sarah Clarke, Steve Coogan, Laura Dern, Lisa Kudrow, Jason Ritter, David Sutcliffe and Maggie Gyllenhaal,, HAPPY ENDINGS deftly weaves together multiple stories to create a sharp, witty look at love, family and the sheer unpredictability of life itself. A feast of buried secrets, missed opportunities and welcome second chances, this wildly original comedy proves that the happiest ending of all is the one you least expect.

Everyone has secrets. Everyone tells at least a few lies (or omits the truth, at any rate). Sometimes it just seems like the right thing to do. These secrets and lies may even keep others or us from pain.

Happy Endings is an amalgam of somewhat interrelated stories that all revolve around secrets and lies. Like many independent films in the last few years, the ensemble story telling gives us a chance to see the story in a broader context than films with simpler plots. If not done well, it can be confusing and distracting. On the other hand, when done well, it can show us the ways in which what one person does often has effects on a wide range of people. Happy Endings ends up somewhere in the middle of these two poles. It doesn’t quite make it to uniting the stories into a whole. Because of that, it seems a bit unconnected when all the loose ends don’t quite get tied up.

The moral of the film, put simply, is that honesty is the best way to find happiness. Each of the characters has secrets they have hidden for some time. Otis is gay, but doesn’t want his father to know. Mamie gave up a child many years ago and never told her step-brother Charlie who fathered the child that she didn’t have an abortion. Charlie thinks that a lesbian couple stole Charlie’s partner’s, Gil, sperm to have a child. Gil doesn’t want Charlie to know he’s had an affair with someone else. And the list goes on.

As the film progresses, many of these secrets come to light. It is in the unfolding of the secrets that people find their liberation – and a bit of salvation.

Throughout the film, we are shown a statement of the truth in half of the screen. In a sense, we know the truth, even as we are being told the lie. In some ways, that commentary by the film makers seems a bit distracting, but as I look back, it serves as a guide as we watch to know what is and is not real.

The key metaphor about truth and falsehood is the documentary being made. Nicky is blackmailing Mamie with information about the son she gave up long ago. He doesn’t really want money; he wants to make a documentary about their reunion. Instead, Mamie and her lover Javier, a massage therapist, convince him to make a film about Javier as a sex worker. (“Happy ending” refers to the extra “service” that might come with a message.) This documentary is staged. It is truly fiction. So too are the lives of the various people in the film. They think they are living authentically, but in reality they are really just staging their lives.

In the end, most of the people find a happy ending – not the euphemism for the massage, but years of satisfying life. Those who find this satisfaction are the ones who have faced their secrets and let them go. Those who continue to hang on to their lies are doomed to less gratifying futures.

Although the film doesn’t hang together as well as it might, it still serves to give us a look at the importance of the truth in our lives and the destructive nature of that which we try to hide.

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