Happy-Go-Lucky [2008]

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Starring: ~ Sally Hawkins, Alexis Zegerman Andrea Riseborough Samuel Roukin Sinead Matthews
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Product Details:

Studio: Momentum Pictures Home Entertainment

Region: 2

Number of Discs: 1

Format: PAL,

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Sales Rank: 509

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Customer Reviews:

This film is a triumph-it does what it says on the box (19 November 2008)
Of it's type, this film is marvellous. I think it's all about taking life as it comes, and making the best of what it chucks at you from day to day - tomorrow is another day. Poppy makes a great character for this theme , and is extremely well played. Just don't expect any deep themes - at least , they weren't there for me.
I watched this film in Paris , with French subtitles, and it drew lots of laughs - but the English idiomatic London accent was completely lost in the absolutely dour translations ........ eg 'that was a journey and a half' became 'quelle adventure'!! - hardly capturing the jaunty feel of the character Poppy at all , which for me was what the film was all about........... so , there must be other levels. I suppose the humour itself just carried it along - I'm sure that even fluent english speaking French watchers could not have kept up with Poppy's dialogue, which was so well done , I thought.
Definitely a film to watch.

Beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful (16 November 2008)
Mike Leigh has popped up throughout my adult life. I remember skiving university finals revision to see, "Life is Sweet', I watched "Secrets and Lies" at least three times, I saw "Career Girls" at a time when my life was falling apart and now one Saturday evening aged 40, I put on the DVD of "Happy-Go-Lucky".

Leigh is a Thomas Hardy for the suburbs. The gloom usually hangs heavily over his work, but Poppy provides light melancholy mixed with brightly-burning love. The flamenco scene shows how he has become the master of comedy, character and setting. Leigh can make a Tesco Express look romantic. I love the way he tells London stories, I'm fascinated by the roads, the rooms and the light. The dialogue is naturalistic but heightened in a distinctive and hilarious style.

I thought I was going to get through the whole film without any pain. It does come, but that's part of the compelling quality of Leigh's film making. This is a super film. One actor says that Sally Hawkins is a mixture between Audrey Hepburn and Norman Wisdom. That's spot on.

Hyperactive happiness is put to the test (04 October 2008)
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is one of those quirky British reels that won't be remembered as one of the best films you've ever seen, but is worth a look and four stars because, as I said to my wife after our advance screening, it "has its brilliant moments".

The protagonist is Poppy (Sally Hawkins), a frenetically happy, 30-year old, primary school teacher living in London's northern reaches with her roommate Zoe (Alexis Zegerman). Poppy's good humor is so inexorable that, while it serves her well with her young charges, it often abrades the patience of adults. Only Zoe is imperturbable.

As with other films of the genre (Local Hero [1983], The Full Monty [1997], Calendar Girls [2003], Waking Ned [1999]), the plot revolves not so much around events as the personalities and eccentricities of the players.

The single best overall performance is perhaps that by Eddie Marsan as the scarily intense Scott, Poppy's driving instructor, whose deep-seated, smoldering anger at the world reflects a tightly wound mental state 180 degrees opposite that of his student. Confined together in the small space of Scott's car, an explosion seems always but a hair-trigger's pull away.

Definitely, the single best scene, the one that had the audience in stitches, is played by Karina Fernandez as a Flamenco teacher, when she attempts to describe to and inculcate in her class of adult students a passion for the dance. Talk about meltdown!

The conflict, if it can be called such, of the story comes as Poppy's happy-go-luckiness scrapes up against the unhappy lives and internal turmoil of others: the mentally unstable derelict she encounters under a bridge in a bleak industrial section of the city, her pregnant and subliminally unhappy younger sister, a bullying and disturbed boy in her class, and, above all, Scott. As the last scene fades into the film credits, the viewer is left wondering if Poppy's felicitous worldview will survive life. One suspects it will.

Hard to take (23 September 2008)
I'm not sure how you are supposed to take Poppy. She is incredibly irritating, constantly giggling and talking . She isn't a "happy" person but someone trying to fill in an empty life with childish behaviour.
Is that how it's supposed to seem?

Maybe - because there is along and strange scene where she meets an inarticulate tramp and Poppy actually listens to him and it feels as if something has been achieved - relationship without normal words. Similarly she does notice the bullied school boy and helps him.

So it does seem to me that it's about a sad person who has a false and annoying happy surface gradually becoming a listener. Maybe she will make people happy later.

So it's well made and ful of detail but I am seriously worrid that you are supposed to find her attractive when to me she is the very least attractive type, hidden by a layer of childishness.

She also seems to be doing a Catherine Tate impressionthroughout - but then Catherine Tate's Donna in Dr Who was a tour de force - a bit like Poppy on the surface but with a deep tragic and serious side that only gradually emerged.

Brilliant! (22 September 2008)
This is absolutely hilarious! The best film I've seen this year, leaves you with a smile on your face for the rest of the day.