HAPPINESS  (1998)  **

Reviewed 10/11/98

Cold and empty, this black comedy unfunnily wallows in the suffering of its characters -- the lost and disillusioned, the pathetic and deranged -- and its all hollow and meaningless except for the message that sex and the desire for sex is bad. Only two things recommend the film, the great performances by Jane Adams, playing a woman with a disastrous career and love life, and Dylan Baker, playing a father lusting after the community's young boys. Happiness is similar to Neil LaBute's shallow Your Friends and Neighbors but even darker and more degenerate. Happiness is disturbing, but not so much for the subject matter as how director Todd Solondz manipulates viewers. Near the end of the film, Lara Flynn Boyle, the one successful character in the story and perhaps the most despicable, tells Jane Adams, "I'm laughing with you, not at you," and Adams replies, "But I'm not laughing." The film also invites the audience to laugh at them, not with them.