LITTLE ROCK — The clumsily titled Happy-ThankYouMorePlease is one of those movies that I want to give a break, even though I’m not sure it deserves one. I am very sure that this is exactly the sort of movie I would - had it come out when I was, say, 27, and stumbling into a deferred adulthood I wasn’t sure I wanted (or had entirely earned). It’s maybe even the kind of movie I would have written back then.
Yet if I had written this movie back then, no one would have been much interested in producing it, though I’m sure a few kindly souls would have clucked encouragement. And the world would have been spared another callow young man’s vague ruminations of what it means to grow up sensitive and male in America.
On the other hand, Josh Radnor is a TV star; he appears in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. And, as it turns out, he’s not a terrible writer. As a director, he’s got a few decent ideas. And attractive friends eager to work. And besides, Zach Braff did all right with Garden State. So he gets to make his movie. That’s not really his fault.
What no one seems to get anymore is that a good writer is not allowed a quota of cliches. You’re just not. You don’t get to use them at all, and though you might be able to get away with subverting them, and playing with audience expectations before upsetting their expectations, it’s probably wiser just to avoid them all together.
And the main problem with HappyThankYouMorePlease (other than the cute title) is that the whole movie is a cliche, and all the characters are types adorned with the quirky flair of Sundancecharacters. And because the movies do teach us how to live, this may well be a sort of honest point of cultural reference. But what the movie offers us is hardly original and thoughtful, it’s simply the sweetly banal story of a selfabsorbed, fashionably scrubby, urban boy-man’s struggle to grow up already.
Some might be offended, mildly or otherwise, at how writer-director-star Radnor’s script seems to fetishize a young black child (Michael Algieri) from a heartbreaking background, turning him into an advertisement for the protagonist’s deep-down decency (and exquisite taste in indie bands).
Still, I understand why some people - mostly young people but maybe some of the young-at-heart as well - will thoroughly enjoy this movie. It’s all but bursting with vague longings and inchoate emotions and all the unspeakable, unsoundable stuff that fills up hearts.
But it’s not like all gushy and cheesy. It’s cool. Because “cool” is the chief virtue in the world its characters and their creator inhabit. Happy-ThankYouMorePlease is cool until death.
HappyThankYou MorePlease 82 Cast: Josh Radnor, Malin Akerman, Zoe Kazan, Pablo Schreiber, Tony Hale, Kate Mara Director: Josh Radnor Rating: R, for language Running time: 100 minutes
MovieStyle, Pages 36 on 04/08/2011