So far so good… until she opens her mouth. The man looking after the bookshop has a beard and a typical alternative intellectual look, and Poppy bombards him with questions and half thought out interjections. He doesn’t warm up to her at all so she becomes sarcastic. Then she gets back to her bike - and horror, it’s been stolen!

So far, I’m already not liking the way she interacts with people. I don’t think she really tried to bring the best out of the shop manager, or tried to make him smile; to me, it seemed like she was criticising him for not smiling, when in fact she doesn’t know him.

But this isn’t the worst by all means. The film is supposed to show us a happy character and how it is easier to live with a smile. But the character is a parody of such a character, and yet very inconsistent. Why do you do if you are a smiling and happy person and your bike gets stolen? Take it in your stride? No, apparently, it’s a good enough reason to learn how to drive, even though she lives five minutes walk from a tube station (she shares a flat on the corner of Finsbury Park Road) and every non-comformist person in London either rides a bike or uses public transport. So why does she want to drive? Ah, the answer is The Plot. Comes in the crazy driving instructor… How convenient…

Other problems with the film include a 10 minutes long scene with a homeless person. This scene doesn’t fit in with the plot at all. Also, relationships between the characters aren’t really shown in depth. We know she’s been living with her flatmate for 10 years and they are both teachers; we know they are good friends, but we don’t know how they met, or how close they are (her flatmate clearly gets annoyed when Poppy gets a boyfriend but we’re not sure why).

Poppy meets a guy, a social worker helping one of her pupils dealing with abuse at home. This shows promise, except that it doesn’t get solved, and we still don’t know what happens to the kid. We also have the classic family argument - three sisters, 1 of them very different from the others.

This film accumulates cliche after cliche. This is why it is a departure from Mike Leigh’s style. In the past, he has delivered us films with first class characters, people that seemed so real on the screen that we couldn’t help but cry and laugh and cry with them. On the contrary, “Happy go lucky” is full of cardboard characters. Happy-not-so-lucky for Mike…

The only good thing about this film is its use of London locations. Most of the locations are in North London, which in itself is quite a cliche too, but still, it’s fun to spot them. Not recommended.

Links:
Sally Hawkins interview, IndieLondon
A Film Four interview with Mike Leigh and Sally Hawkins about “Happy-Go-Lucky”

Tags: london

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 4:25 pm and is filed under film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.