List Price: $14.98You Pay Only: $10.99 You Save: $3.99 (27%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: LION'S GATE ENTERTAINMENT
EAN: 9781573625630
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 1573625639
Label: Lions Gate
Manufacturer: Lions Gate
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Publisher: Lions Gate
Region Code: 1
Release Date: April 27, 1999
Running Time: 139 minutes
Sales Rank: 9198
Studio: Lions Gate
Theatrical Release Date: October 16, 1998
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
When a young woman (Jane Adams) rejects her current overweight suitor (Jon Lovitz) in a restaurant he unexpectedly places a curse on her. The film then moves on to her sisters. One (Cynthia Stevenson) is a happily married woman with a psychiatrist husband (Dylan Baker) and three kids. Unfortunately the husband develops an unnatural fascination for his 11 year old sons male classmates fantasizes about mass killing in a park and masturbates to teen magazines. One of his patients (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has an unrequited fascination for the third sister (Lara Flynn Boyle). Meanwhile the apparently stable 40 year marriage of the sisters parents (Ben Gazzara Louise Lasser) suddenly unravels when he decides he has had enough and wants to live a hermits life in Florida. Obviously the whole movie is slightly warped in its viewpoint and certainly presents abnormal relationships among all of its parties. System Requirements:Directed by Todd Solondz Writing credits Todd Solondz Cast overview first billed only: Jane Adams (II) Jon Lovitz Philip Seymour Hoffman Dylan Baker Lara Flynn Boyle Justin Elvin Cynthia Stevenson Lila Glantzman-Leib Gerry Becker Rufus Read Louise Lasser Ben Gazzara Camryn Manheim Arthur J. Nascarella Molly Shannon Also Known As: Todd Solondzs Untitled (1997) (USA: working title) Runtime: 134 Color: Color (DuArt) Sound Mix: Dolby Certification: France:-12 / Italy:VM18 / Norway:15 / Sweden:15 Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: UPC: 031398702337
Amazon.com:
At times brilliant and insightful, at times repellent and false, Happiness is director Todd Solondz's multistory tale of sex, perversion, and loneliness. Plumbing depths of Crumb-like angst and rejection, Solondz won the Cannes International Critics Prize in 1998 and the film was a staple of nearly every critic's Top Ten list. Admirable, shocking, and hilarious for its sarcastic yet strangely empathetic look at consenting adults' confusion between lust and love, the film stares unflinchingly until the audience blinks. But it doesn't stop there. A word of strong caution to parents: One of the main characters, a suburban super dad (played by Dylan Baker), is really a predatory pedophile and there is more than an attempt to paint him as a sympathetic character. Children are used in this film as running gags or, worse, the means to an end. Whether that end is a humorous scene for Solondz or sexual gratification for the rapist becomes largely irrelevant. Happiness is an intelligent, sad film, revelatory and exact at moments. It's also abuse in the guise of art. That's nothing to celebrate. --Keith Simanton
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - This movie is not in Anamorphic widescreen!!
This is a great movie, but beware this DVD is not in anamorphic wide screen format -- it is letter boxed and looks really really crappy on a wide screen TV. What gives! I really hope the film gets re-released.
Rating:  - He tricked you
Mr. Solondz is actually not a very original storyteller or comedic craftsman. I remember when I saw this movie I wasn't shocked or offended. I was bored. If jokes depend on the fact that they're offensive, that probably means the overall foundation is pretty shaky. I was amazed to see how big of an impact this film made on most people. It just proves that most people haven't considered all sides of things and when something taboo is presented in a comedic form many people are quick to call it "brilliant". If anything, I wasn't so much offended by the film as I was by the people whose outlook on humanity was exposed to be wishy-washy and corrupt by their reaction to the film. But then again, I think that was part of Mr. Solondz's agenda. He has contempt for the audience, and he wants them to BE guilty, not FEEL guilty. He wants to prove through the intended audience reaction that humanity is corrupt and that we turn our backs on our fellow man at the drop of a hat. As for me, I was just sickened by the fact that a rare opportunity to tell a harrowing story was wasted on predictable attempts at humor and manipulation. It felt very hollow.
Rating:  - Unredeemed By Shock Value
There was a time -- I'm sure you remember it -- when we were in Junior High/Middle School, and someone would say the word 'penis' and we would all either smirk, or chuckle, or burst out laughing.
It didn't matter what the context was... could've been a discussion of the Holocaust, and we still would've found it funny.
On reflection and in some measure of greater maturity, there's nothing really funny about the word 'penis', but Middle Schoolers (and perhaps some adults) will always think it so. In that same way, a movie like Happiness will always draw a fair amount of admiration from some, just for the fact that it touches (or, actually, dwells) on dysfunction and such taboo subjects as pederasty. In many peoples' minds, this alone will be enough to make Happiness "daring" or have some other merit. They will love it because it goes where other movies don't. And... there *is* something to be said for that, but just as the word 'penis' doesn't make the Holocaust actually funny, depicting pederasty doesn't make this a good movie.
Happiness is a tedious film. It is tedious from its opening scene to its final credits. It uses its "shocking" subject matter, questionable characters and tawdry situations to distract us from the fact that it does not, at heart, have a whole lot to say. And, that's a shame, because if you're going to bother to do so much to draw people's notice, you might as well do something useful with it once acquired. Instead, the movie closes on ... Read More
Rating:  - One of the blackest comedies..
I Love this movie. I'm a HUGE fan of Todd Solondz. He always has such a great take on serious subject matter, for instance pedophilia and murder and suicide like in this flick. The opening scene is sooo hilarious, thanks to Jon Lovitz's performance. He has such a great line when he's telling Joy she's horrible, "You're s***, I'm champagne." And the whole family dynamic and how it's thrown up in hte air and turned upside down. The stereotypical nuclear family with a pedophile as a father, drugging his family to have his way with his son's friend. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is tremendous, he's the epitamy of pathetic. A charachter so boring even his therapist zones out on his session thinking of what he needs from the market. Being so frightend to talk to the beautiful woman next door, but calls her obsessivly. It has such a great cast, even the kids in the film are good. I find that every Solondz flick has good child actors, who could forget Heather Matterazzo in Welcome to the Dollhouse. Jared Harris is also good in this movie, he's such a chameleon. I highly recommend this film, if you're into extremely black comedy and aren't offended easily. Then by all means check out this movie.
Rating: - To disgusting for its own good
I suspect my review for this film will not be a very popular one,certainly not from those that call this movie,brillant,daring,cutting edge,ext.Yet I do not want to pretend that this film didn't disgust me.I am not easily shocked believe it or not (and I don't expect anyone to but it is the truth) but this film is simply to much.I really do see the point in a general way of taking on such distasteful topics but this film does so with a casual depavity thats is disturbing to say the least.Really this film seems less concerned with adressing these topics in the serious way they should be and more concerned with simply shocking the viewer as much as possible.
I realize some call it daring and groundbreaking but I don't agree,there is a difference between ground breaking and just trying to make the sickest film you can for its own sake.Ultimately after watching this movie I found myself feeling very depressed and deciding I never wanted to watch this garbage ever again.
Happiness stars Dylan Baker as Dr. Bill Maplewood a sick beast of a man that dreams of murdering people and having sex with young boys and is broadly speaking about a trio of sisters and those around them including Cynthia Stevenson as his wife trying to believe all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds,Lara Flynn Boyle as an author not very satisfied with her success and facinated by the man that keeps making obscene phone calls to her(Philp Seymore Hoffman) who is also a patient of Dr. Maplewood and Jane ... Read More
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