Happythankyoumoreplease

I spent some sizable time during the movie trying to think of clever ways to rename it but didn't like anything I came up with.  If the comments on blogger actually worked right I'd put it to you guys to supply something better than: Unhappyyou'rewelcomenomoreplease.  Because of a story told in the movie, the title would have been better if they dropped the “Happy.”  But I guess since everyone ends up happy at the end they had to stick that on there.  Ooops, hope I didn’t spoil anything with that.

HTYMP is about people facing 30 and doing stuff like living their lives in a mostly non-remarkable way.  Actually there is like one interesting thing about each of the 3 main characters played by Josh Radnor, Malin Ackerman, and Zoe Kazan.  Josh's Sam is harboring a runaway foster kid he found.  Malin's Annie has alopecia (totalis for those in the know) and throws a party to inform her friends about it (actually a fantastic idea, especially for disorders that people don't know much about). However the alopecia isn't her problem, her terrible taste in men is the big issue. Zoe's Mary Catherine is dealing with a boyfriend that wants to move to LA.  The horror!  Mary Catherine's problem seems the most basic but it gets a bit more interesting and I appreciated the way it was handled.  

Not to sound callous but the only person I cared about how they ended up was the displaced foster kid, Naheen. He was only barely better off with Sam than his clueless foster mom who left him on the subway. You see Sam is a writer and quite possibly using life with the kid as a basis for a story or novel.  This never really gets flushed out though.  And Naheen's situation was the only one with real, legal consequences.

HTYMP does get points for:

1) having an Executive Producer named Bingo Gublelmann!!!Best. Name. Ever.

2) being a writer/director combo (even if the writer/director is Ted from HIMYM). 

3) BUSTER!!! Only not Buster but a sweet, lovelorn guy who is goofy but in all the right ways.

Had HTYMP not suffered from many things, one of which was too many plots, it would have been better.  There were a couple of little funny bits.  The soundtrack was cool.  Mary Catherine had a great freak-out which was fun to watch.  However Ted, er, Sam, oops Josh Radnor is still mostly the same actor from HIMYM.  He is lost.  That man is perpetually lost. 

The little kid was cute but it seems like cheating.  Yes. I have decided that using a cute kid with a sad story in your writing/directing debut is cheating.  Whatever.  He was still really cute.

Maybe if I had watched this when I was in my late 20s I might have liked it more.  I’m a bitter, old lady now and have no patience for whiney, New York, semi-hipsters.