Tom and Janet (McHale and Bishé) are every friend group’s worst nightmare: a married couple who not only rarely ever fight (and are quick to make up when they do) but also whose sex life is as strong and passionate as it was when they first married . . . 14 years ago. So strong is their lust that their friends Val and Karen (Paul Scheer and Natalie Zea) disinvite them from a couples’ weekend during a dinner-turned-intervention because they have too much sex and “everyone hates them.” Only slightly dismayed, the Stepford-esque couple continues living in bliss until a mysterious man-in-black type (Root) appears at their doorstep with a briefcase containing two syringes that can cure their shared inability to experience diminishing returns (thus making them normal). What happens next might reveal one too many zigs in a movie overfull of zags, but all of it is preamble to Tom and Janet going on that couple’s weekend getaway after all.
Set almost entirely in an ultramodern Airbnb reminiscent of the minimalistic mansion from Parasite, Happily becomes a feature-length Twilight Zone episode for better or worse. Are Tom and Janet really that happy? Did one of their so-called friends send that eerie guest with the briefcase to their door? Will the weekend turn into a weird group sex thing? Writer/director BenDavid Grabinski concocts an interesting premise, but the answers (and intentional non-answers) to these questions end up making the whole less interesting than the parts. The tonal shifts in the movie—from quirky satire to improvisational one-liner comedy, from ponderously art-house to romantic drama—show a youthful ambition that might have benefited from a tighter focus.
The casting of comedic actors in dramatic roles has often proven to be an inspired choice, but Happily casts an entire movie of them for roles with dialogue that is understated and relatively joke-free. Jon Daly (the aforementioned quipster) manages to get in a few out-there references, but the movie is more often weird than funny, and intentionally so. Two of the film’s more dramatic-leaning actors, Kerry Bishé and Natalie Morales, end up breathing some life into the movie just by showing the smallest range of actual emotions (those emotions being scared and drunk, respectively).
Happily is a hodgepodge of disparate parts, and taken individually there is evidence of care and craft. At its core, it tries to be about relationships and the lies we tell ourselves and others to sustain them, but those themes get muddied by the high-concept premise, the tonal whiplash, and an unnecessary Deus ex Machina used to put all the characters in place. As evidenced by the film’s overlong and unearned epilogue, followed by inapt picture credits (I swear one or two of them are actual blooper reels), followed again by not one, but two post-credits sequences, Happily is just a bit too much.
