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Happy-Go-Lucky [2008]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

A more upbeat movie than you might expect from Mike Leigh, yet one that finds one of Britain’s finest film directors still on good form. Happy-Go-Lucky follows a primary school teacher, Poppy, played by Sally Hawkins, who has an infectious, positive manner about her. She’s the shining core of the film, an upbeat, happy, yet absolutely three dimensional character.

Poppy’s nature is, inevitably, somewhat tested in Happy-Go-Lucky, not least by driving instructor Scott. Superbly played by Eddie Marsan, it’s fair to say that Scott doesn’t share Poppy’s positivity, yet once more, he’s a frighteningly real character, and at times extremely unsettling to watch.

There are layers to Happy-Go-Lucky, with plenty bubbling on under the surface, yet that there’s no escaping the fact that it is a cheerier movie than Leigh usually delivers. It’s fuelled particularly by Sally Hawkins, who is quite brilliant in the central role, and it’s potentially a career-making performance from her.

Yet, once again, the hidden star of Happy-Go-Lucky is Mike Leigh himself, who has shaped an often very funny film, but not one without some gravitas to it. The man remains a national treasure, and Happy-Go-Lucky is but the latest reason why. An easy film to recommend. --Jon Foster


A movie by Mike Leigh as optimistic and touching as Poppy is, and sometimes as irritating
Review date: 2008-12-01 Rating: 8 out of 10

It's probably because unrestrained optimism can be as tiring as climbing six flights of stairs carrying a sack of groceries, but Poppy, as much as I admired her outlook, wore me out. We spend several days with this 30-year-old young woman who lives and works in blue collar North London. She shares a flat with her best friend, teaches at an elementary school, bikes around town, takes driving lessons, has her spine jerked into shape, signs up for flamenco, encounters a down-and-outer, helps a student who is angry for reasons we don't know, maybe finds a boyfriend, has her bike stolen, tries to make a bookseller smile, and sums up in a rowboat her approach to living.

By now you've guessed that Happy-Go-Lucky is Poppy's story, the story of a woman who chooses indomitably to be cheerful, to try to make others cheerful and to refuse to let life's downbeats dictate her own music. The movie is improbable, irritating and often quite touching.

Sally Hawkins plays Poppy. It must have been an incredibly draining job. Poppy is a woman who laughs, cracks jokes, mugs, does a dance step or two or all of the above whenever she's happy, sad, in pain, feels awkward with others or is just by herself. She doesn't stop. Yet with all this obsessive cheerfulness (although it's not really obsessive because Poppy makes her own choices of how she wants to be and what makes her happy), we also realize that somewhere in the incessant behavior is an empathetic woman, deeper than we might have thought. When she deals with her angry student, she really listens to the child and slowly draws him out. Her experiences with an over-the-top driving instructor, a man full of resentments and pride, eventually leave her on a sidewalk with him driving off. But in the face of his possibly dangerous anger, she actually wants to help the guy. She reaches out carefully but sincerely. As loony an experience as her night-time encounter with a chanting tramp is, she's more concerned with the man than she is scared enough to run away. And, who knows, perhaps she finds the love of her life in Tim, the social services counselor brought in to work with the troubled boy. We really hope so. With all these vignettes, Sally Hawkins probably has given the performance of her career.

But to be truthful, I got tired of Poppy well before the movie was over. I hope that things will turn out well for her, but life has a way of springing some nasty surprises no matter how nice a person you might be. I liked Poppy, but she'd probably drive me crazy as a neighbor.

The writer and director, Mike Leigh, is one of those rare movie birds, a man who makes his own movies on his terms. He doesn't operate from a script, but works closely with the actors in plotting out where they will go when the cameras start. Any director has my vote who can come up with such disparate and excellent movies as Vera Drake (2004) and Topsy-Turvy (1999). Vera Drake, with a powerful, anguished performance by Imelda Staunton, deals with abortion in England when it was a crime. Topsy-Turvy is the delightful story of how Gilbert and Sullivan, close to loathing each other at times, came to create The Mikado. Jim Broadbent as Gilbert and Allan Corduner as Sullivan have seldom been better. "I remain the guy with no script," Leigh has been quoted as saying, "who is very unforthcoming about what the film will be about and who won't discuss casting, which is the biggest sin of all. I will not talk about a film, even if there is a massive budget, if there are strings attached about casting." Mike Leigh creates the movies he chooses to. If for no other reason, this makes Happy-Go-Lucky worth seeing.

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Reviews


Happy-Go-Lucky or just plain stupid?
Review date: 2008-11-27 Rating: 2 out of 10

The only good thing about this film is that the acting is great. It is not a comedy - it is not funny and it is actually disturbing in places. Anyone with a degree of sense would have switched driving instructors after the first lesson and reported him to the DSA and perhaps the local mental health trust - for his sake as well as hers . Also, going up to strange homeless men you find on the street (with apparent mental health issues) is not smart - yet it is represented as endearing and altruistic. Instead of being allowed to aspire to Poppy's outlook - I found her so irritating and mindless at times! As a character she was too inconsistent to really warm to and to equate optimism with her sometimes oblivious outlook is enough to make anyone a pessimist.

This film is a triumph-it does what it says on the box
Review date: 2008-11-19 Rating: 8 out of 10

Of it's type, this film is marvellous. I think it's all about taking life as it comes, and making the best of what it chucks at you from day to day - tomorrow is another day. Poppy makes a great character for this theme , and is extremely well played. Just don't expect any deep themes - at least , they weren't there for me.
I watched this film in Paris , with French subtitles, and it drew lots of laughs - but the English idiomatic London accent was completely lost in the absolutely dour translations ........ eg 'that was a journey and a half' became 'quelle adventure'!! - hardly capturing the jaunty feel of the character Poppy at all , which for me was what the film was all about........... so , there must be other levels. I suppose the humour itself just carried it along - I'm sure that even fluent english speaking French watchers could not have kept up with Poppy's dialogue, which was so well done , I thought.
Definitely a film to watch.

Beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful
Review date: 2008-11-16 Rating: 10 out of 10

Mike Leigh has popped up throughout my adult life. I remember skiving university finals revision to see, "Life is Sweet', I watched "Secrets and Lies" at least three times, I saw "Career Girls" at a time when my life was falling apart and now one Saturday evening aged 40, I put on the DVD of "Happy-Go-Lucky".

Leigh is a Thomas Hardy for the suburbs. The gloom usually hangs heavily over his work, but Poppy provides light melancholy mixed with brightly-burning love. The flamenco scene shows how he has become the master of comedy, character and setting. Leigh can make a Tesco Express look romantic. I love the way he tells London stories, I'm fascinated by the roads, the rooms and the light. The dialogue is naturalistic but heightened in a distinctive and hilarious style.

I thought I was going to get through the whole film without any pain. It does come, but that's part of the compelling quality of Leigh's film making. This is a super film. One actor says that Sally Hawkins is a mixture between Audrey Hepburn and Norman Wisdom. That's spot on.

Hyperactive happiness is put to the test
Review date: 2008-10-04 Rating: 8 out of 10

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is one of those quirky British reels that won't be remembered as one of the best films you've ever seen, but is worth a look and four stars because, as I said to my wife after our advance screening, it "has its brilliant moments".

The protagonist is Poppy (Sally Hawkins), a frenetically happy, 30-year old, primary school teacher living in London's northern reaches with her roommate Zoe (Alexis Zegerman). Poppy's good humor is so inexorable that, while it serves her well with her young charges, it often abrades the patience of adults. Only Zoe is imperturbable.

As with other films of the genre (Local Hero [1983], The Full Monty [1997], Calendar Girls [2003], Waking Ned [1999]), the plot revolves not so much around events as the personalities and eccentricities of the players.

The single best overall performance is perhaps that by Eddie Marsan as the scarily intense Scott, Poppy's driving instructor, whose deep-seated, smoldering anger at the world reflects a tightly wound mental state 180 degrees opposite that of his student. Confined together in the small space of Scott's car, an explosion seems always but a hair-trigger's pull away.

Definitely, the single best scene, the one that had the audience in stitches, is played by Karina Fernandez as a Flamenco teacher, when she attempts to describe to and inculcate in her class of adult students a passion for the dance. Talk about meltdown!

The conflict, if it can be called such, of the story comes as Poppy's happy-go-luckiness scrapes up against the unhappy lives and internal turmoil of others: the mentally unstable derelict she encounters under a bridge in a bleak industrial section of the city, her pregnant and subliminally unhappy younger sister, a bullying and disturbed boy in her class, and, above all, Scott. As the last scene fades into the film credits, the viewer is left wondering if Poppy's felicitous worldview will survive life. One suspects it will.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Samuel Roukin
Sally Hawkins
Andrea Riseborough
Alexis Zegerman
Sinead Matthews

Creators:
Sally Hawkins (Primary Contributor)
Alexis Zegerman (Primary Contributor)
Mike Leigh (Writer)

Director(s):

Recording label: Momentum Pictures Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Momentum Pictures Home Entertainment
EAN: 5060116723175
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2008-08-18
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 114 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2008

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