Happiness (2006) User Reviews

Imagination and Humor

[patrickschwab64 · 10/10 · 9 July 2007]

I got to watch Happiness at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I truly enjoyed it. It was one of the most intriguing and original of the program and one of the funniest short films I've seen. I was really impressed. It's so creative, touching, intelligent and ironic.

Great music choice. It brings humor and sadness to the piece. Although the concept is abstract (Happiness can be purchased in a box) it's handled in a playful manner, like a fable.

The setting is quite unusual and surprising: a factory where middle-aged workers test condoms for leaks! Beautifully shot and paced. I also enjoyed that it's almost a silent film.

It's refreshing to see a short achieving so efficiently to capture the hollowness of our consumer culture.

I guess I just didn't get it

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 5 January 2008]

I appreciate that the other reviewer for this short film liked it--they may be right, but I felt compelled to write a review that gives a different perspective. While they described it as funny, I just didn't get it--and found the short a bit disappointing.

An older lady works at a factory testing condoms. One day after work, she stops at a little store and buys a box labeled "happiness". Again and again, she's tempted to open it up and find out what it is, but in the end she just takes it back to the store to get her money back to buy some shoes. That's it.

As I said, maybe I just didn't get it. But I couldn't help but feel pretty bored by the film. The only things that intrigued me was my difficulty discriminating where the film was made. There isn't a lot of dialog, but what little there was was in English and the city appeared to perhaps be in Europe or the US. However, the box was printed in Cyrillic--possibly from Russia.

Sorry. I just wasn't particularly taken by this film. I especially didn't like the jerky camera work indicative of a cheap video camera.