Happiness 2: Happinesser?

How does one summarise Life During Wartime for the uninitiated and sustain the shock of the original film's dark, twisted nature and taboo breaking subjects?

Todd Solondz has consistently made awkward, dark films that had amazingly funny moments that change tone to the dramatic, pushing melodramatic, so perfectly, and with Happiness he went all out, a child's attempts to masturbate all the way to the climax, his father's horrible fetish and how he goes about getting what he wants, a bright young woman who searches for happiness and ends up in a string of bad relationships, a poet who can't write as she's never been raped and a woman who murdered then cut up a doorman who raped her.

For a comedy drama it's particularly in depth and at times graphic, with many dark moments.

Fortunately this follow up doesn't go down those roads. The closest to a young boy and his dad talking about topics in a frank manner that is close to the bone if not past it is exchanged for a small conversation between Trish, now played by the wonderful Allison Janney, telling her young son Timmy, who was young in the first, now almost 13, about her date with a man getting her wet.

The film opens in a rather genius mode, almost shot for shot like the original, the opening titles with the white frames, the new Joy, a 40 year old married to an ex-con who reveals he still phones up random girls to get himself off, after giving Joy the same ashtray Jon Lovitz hands her in Happiness' opening sequence.

Hell, Lovitz's character offs himself in the first one but returns as a ghost, in the form of the magnificent Paul Reubans, to talk to Joy and try to convince her they are the perfect couple.

Ultimately though, Joy, who had a lot of the last film, is only handed a small segment of the 96 minute runtime, instead it's focussed on Trish moving on from Bill, now portrayed by Ciaran Hinds as a believable prison serving change from Dylan Baker's daring performance. Bill is out of prison and stalking the family to see what he is left to do, whilst Trish has found a new man, a sweet, kind but slightly older gentleman.

Timmy is gearing up for his Bar Mitzvah and suddenly learns his dad isn't dead like his mother told him, but actually still in prison, or he thinks he is even when he's just outside, and finds out what Bill did in the first film.

The film boils down to simple conversations, some very dark moments as always, and some out and out hysterical stuff, but given it's brief runtime in comparison to the 135 minute original the film seems slight, we go to places but it's more a Before Sunset glimpse than a Clerks II. full on here they are, and they are going on another journey. The acting is universally solid, never perfect, but never awful, the re-casting is odd but adds to the freedom Solondz gives the characters to change their lives instead of sticking in the rut of the original. Whilst the choice of Timmy looking oddly like Billy's friend Johnny, the first victim in the original, is rather distracting, to the point that a talk between College aged Billy, played by Linus from Fanboys, about Bonobos and incest seems rather, well, horrible.

For a film I was interested in from the get go but apprehensive about the approach, the tone and if Solondz would Crank 2 it and go for more taboos to break instead of character, I was relieved when it was all about real life people in situations, be it real or surreal, using humour and drama to perfection, it's a perfectly imperfect film that won't go down well in the mainstream, you need to see Happiness before seeing this film, and as there's still no distributor (A blank slate at the start of the film where it'd be) it'll be great to see the film get out to people.

And the HD will looks great, shot using Red cameras the depth and definition is remarkable, made me appreciate Solondz as a visual as well as witty writer/director.

If you can, I recommend seeing this film, it's funny, well made and rather brilliant in it's own way, just too darn short.
8/10