If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Every now & then, a quietly magnificent film sneaks up on me & manages to both astound me with its craftsmanship & move me poignantly. "Happy Endings" is one such cinematic treat. Its power lies in both its contrasting simplicity of cinematography design & its nuanced, depth of character explorations. At no time in this picture was I able to "catch" anyone acting nor "define" the immediate POV for the director Roos. This fine work virtually "reeked" of independent filmmaker authenticity while managing to engage a Robert Altman-like immersion into the prolific ensemble performances which literally transfixes its viewer. The film compelled my desire to "understand" both what toke place & why it all happened the way it did. I was absolutely flabbergasted by Kudrow's magnificent performance...The camera loved her every scene & her acting went "toe-to-toe with the incredible yet subtle & nuanced 'performance to die' for by Maggie... I had to watch this flick TWICE back-to-back after thirsting for greater comprehension of each character's motivations...This movie is now ranked as one of the best, stumbled-upon 'diamonds in the rough/underrated gems I have ever seen since I accidentally saw "Closer" Hell, even Tom Arnold & Jason Ritter killed in this gem...

Happy Endings There was attempt to do something original here, unfortunately, the experiment failed. It's more of a graphic novel with moving pictures than it is a film. We're spoodfed ridiculous amounts of exposition via placards that pop up on the side of the screen like fun bubble facts from a video. And what makes it worse is that it's not an objective, ominipotent narration, but a narration that's written in the spoken vernacular with a definite point of view. If it has a definite point of view, who's writing it? Some mysterious omnipotent subjective narrator that we never meet. And we know it's not God, because of the lame attempts at being clever and funny. And just when you think it can't get worse, the fun facts tell us things in the distant past, the distant future, the characters' thoughts, and even what's going on with the bodily functions of some of the characters. Oh man. The story lines aren't very good either. I could not see Mamie going along with the extortion and the other shanigans that goes on after. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief. Most of the dialog was confusing, implausible or just lame. For example, Lane tells Jude, "I still don't see the problem. In a month, you tell the old guy it's his... and then when you deliver, it's like this really big preemie... that just happens to look like both of them. We're not reinenting the wheel here." Yeah, it's the old have sex with the son, have sex with the father and you don't know who got you pregnant. We all know that routine, right? Who hasn't been down that road? It's so ridiculous. The storyline with the lesbians and male gay couple is not much better. It's way too purposely convoluted. It's like the filmmakers are digging to find ways to unnecessarily complicate the storyline. And then there's the hallmark of trendy and lazy filmmakers - the corny montages set to trendy pop music to tell us how to feel. And the split screen thing seemed like it was only there to show that they could do it. And why was Mamie running willy-nilly at the end? When I heard the title, it made me think of that hackneyed joke about massages and I thought the filmmakers were above referencing a stupid, overplayed joke like that. But, sure enough, that's what they were doing. It reminds me of "Coyote Ugly", another waste of film. Virtually every actor in this film is great, but they can't save a script this absurd. It's just so much schlop.

This movie has what 99% of most movies don't have: originality. This is a movie like none we've ever seen. It's clear that Don Roos wanted to make something different, something that would go way over the line. And, he accomplished that. I loved it. Don Roos stepped way over the boundaries of most current movie making. I almost consider him the American version of Pedro Almdóvar. The movie is riveting, cute, original, and most importantly, almost completely unpredictable. The crap that Hollywood has been putting out lately comes nothing close to Happy Endings. Kudos to Roos and his team for putting such an awesome movie and clearly trying to offend at the same time. I love it when a movie tries to offend its audience. This movie did just that and I loved every minute of it. Truth is, most of us cannot be offended and we loved it for that exact reason. We love imaging others watching this movie and by imagining their offense, we enjoy the movie even more. The movie steps over so many boundaries and rules and it's pulled off flawlessly.

Don Roos wrote and directed this lively, sometimes poignant, but not especially funny comedy-drama centering around an abortion counselor's secret that she had given birth to her step-brother's baby when she was a teenager and quickly gave it up for adoption. In this role, Lisa Kudrow really excels with the writer-director's dryly observant style: she's loose but not flailing, inquisitive but not harping, apprehensive but not frightened. Kudrow (whose comic timing reminds one of Roseanne's in the early years of her TV sitcom) mixes a look of anxiety, despair, nervousness and anticipation with astonishing skill--even when her character is humiliated (or humiliates herself), Kudrow has a way of keeping all the flightiness grounded in some form of reality. Matching her, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Tom Arnold have some wonderful early scenes; she's a born user and a killer karaoke singer, while he plays the father of the gay 21-year-old drummer whom Gyllenhaal has already seduced and discarded. It's too bad we don't get more of this relationship, and also unfortunate that Roos covers up most of their dialogue with soundtrack music (it's a coupling which happens in montage). Roos plants little subtitles throughout the movie to help sort out who's-who, and this works to some degree (yet it's a relief when the device is momentarily given a rest). Some of the other story threads are dim (a couple of which center on gay men turning their homosexuality on and off like a light-switch), but Kudrow's work and Tom Arnold's natural, easy-going presence keep the film absorbing and often appealing. And nobody sings "Just the Way You Are" like Gyllenhaal. **1/2 from ****