Nice effects though.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

And I argue it is one of the top five films of the 1990s. Others have said what needs to be said.

To call Todd Solondz's "Happiness" a dark comedy is to redefine the words "dark" and "comedy". It hates the world and everyone in it, and takes great pleasure in mocking people stupid enough to try to be happy. In Solondz's world, life is pointless, hope is for suckers, and everybody is basically bad at heart. It says something that the movie's most human, sympathetic character is a child molester.And, yes, it's a comedy - often a very, very funny one. Funny in a morbid, gallows humor, dead baby joke sort of way, but funny nonetheless.The chief characters in "Happiness" are all stunted, narcissistic and hopelessly inadequate. Joy (Jane Adams) is a born loser who drifts through a series of menial jobs and drives her boyfriend to suicide; her sister Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle) is so self-absorbed that she thinks her biggest problem is that everyone loves her too much; her neighbor Allen (Philip Seymour Hoffman) can only connect to people by making obscene phone calls; and Bill (Dylan Baker), his therapist and Joy and Helen's brother-in-law, is a pedophile who rapes two of his 11-year-old son's friends. Somehow, Solondz makes these horrible people really, really funny. Like John Waters and the Farrelly Brothers, Solondz finds humor in ugliness and revels in bad taste. He makes sexual dysfunction and personal failure brutally funny; Allen's obscene phone calls, for example, are almost endearing in their ineptitude and anatomical incorrectness ("I'm gonna f*** you in the... ear"), while Helen's narcissism makes her gloriously clueless ("If only I had been raped as a child - then I would know authenticity!"). Solondz shows his characters in a clear, satiric light, and it despises them.While Solondz may not like his characters, he does not take the easy way out by making them caricatures. Every one of these awful human beings is a three-dimensional character with reasons for being awful.For example, most directors would have made Bill a one-note villain, but Solondz makes him a pitiful monster who is tortured by ghastly sexual urges that he knows are wrong. There's a tough scene near the end where Bill has a frank talk with his son Billy about his pedophilia, admitting: that he enjoyed raping his victims; that he would do it again; and, while he would not rape his own son, he would "jerk off instead". Both father and son are crying - Billy with horror as he realizes just what Bill is, and Bill with shame and despair as he realizes the same thing. It's hard to watch, but it's an acting master class and absolutely fearless film-making.This is a real actor's movie; the cast gives career-best performances. Baker is both horrifying and heartbreaking as Bill; he squirms in his own skin, as if he is being eaten alive by his own sickness. We pity him, whether we want to or not. Hoffman is hilariously pathetic as Allen, sweating and mumbling with lonely self-hatred. Adams is sad and sweet as the luckless Helen, the closest thing the movie has to a moral center, while Boyle is priceless as the contemptible Helen, swanning around as if waiting for the world to thank her for being born."Happiness" is the epitome of "acquired taste" - its humor is bitter, acidic and often cruel, and it takes real joy in offending the audience. Go elsewhere for a feel-good comedy with a happy ending. If nothing else, though, it's a true original, and deserves credit for carving out its own niche in the "dark comedy" genre.

"Happiness" is a film of sheer audacity, intellect, and brilliance yet one that takes the cinema to depths that the mainstream would never attempt. Director Todd Solondz takes the viewer on an extraordinary journey, and it's incredibly profound, amusing, and most certainly unforgettable. He makes punchlines out of misery and pedophilia while eventually arriving at a touching and tragic vision of humanity. It is distressing and utterly hilarious at the same time, and the performances across the board are simply fantastic. "Happiness" is an ensemble piece of five different stories, all of which intersect from time to time. The film concerns the lives of several related New Jersey residents--a sexually frustrated professional (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a pedophile psychologist (Dylan Baker), his blissfully delusional wife (Cynthia Stevenson), their 11-year-old son (Rufus Read) who's concerned with his inability to ejaculate, an unhappy older couple (Ben Gazzara, Louise Lasser), and others. Self-centeredness is the chief characteristic of nearly everyone in this film.At two hours and 20 minutes,"Happiness" rambles a bit, but the strength of these characters is undeniable. The film strongly benefits for thoroughly realized characters and relationships along with Solondz's masterful ability to switch the tone from comic to tragic at the drop of a dime. We experience empathy for the kind of people we would ordinarily feel uncomfortable around. Solondz does not judge his characters, he doesn't excuse them, and he doesn't reduce them to wicked villains or victims. He simply sees them, and he invites us to do the same.

This 1998 independent film "Happiness" clearly can be called a film that's different strokes for different folks! It looks at the lives in and out of different characters, mostly it examines what makes them happy when it comes life, relationships, and intimate pleasure. It centers around the struggle of three sisters first up is Joy(Jane Adams)who's just recently broke up with her boyfriend and now the only happiness she can find is teaching and working at her various jobs. Then second is the hot and sexy author Helen(Lara Flynn Boyle) who just might be in for a strange bedfellow in a guy who's a stalker type showing his love with obscene phone calls(a great and unknown role from the late Philip Seymour Hoffman). Finally number three is Trish(C. Stevenson) the rich housewife with a kid yet she has a secret monster for a husband a messed up shrink(Dylan Baker). Overall a film that explores the differences in intimate choice as the different and dark feelings of intimacy make many happy with satisfaction. Overall good character and thought study film.