"It's a comedy, sort of," a title card announces at the start of Happy Endings --just after Mamie (Lisa Kudrow) has been hit by a car. So it is, but talk about an unhappy beginning! Never fear, writer/director Don Roos will fulfill the promise of that title in several unexpected ways. The story then flashes back to 1983 for Mamie's life-altering encounter with her stepbrother. Mamie and Charley (Steve Coogan) will struggle with its consequences for the rest of the film. Does her teen pregnancy explain the fact that she became an abortion counsellor or that he came out of the closet? Roos doesn't say, but nor does he judge. He loves his characters--foibles and all--in his ambitious, Altman-esque follow-up to the acerbic yet heartfelt >The Opposite of Sex. As before, Kudrow is the center around which the other plotlines revolve (and her uptight, yet likable Mamie couldn't resemble TV???s Phoebe less). In the end, though, Maggie Gyllenhaal's seductive Jude and Tom Arnold's sensitive Frank are Roos' most inspired creations. Their relationship is one of contemporary cinema's oddest and most touching. The happy ending for one will be real, the other imaginary, but everyone will earn the one they get. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

An overblown, rather forced, mish-mash of ideas, most of which simply don't work. Not a patch on The Opposite of Sex, which was sharp, witty, outrageously funny and compulsively watchable.

The story here is about the intersecting lives of a group of people in Los Angeles. You've got your dissatisfied woman, her masseuse boyfriend, a conniving young woman, a conflicted gay guy and his dad, two other gay guys who are friends with two gay girls, and this sleazy guy who might or might not be a documentary film maker.

Happy Endings has a certain amount of potential, but two things stopped me from enjoying the film. One is that there is an intrusive amount of text that pops up onscreen throughout. Some of it is funny, but it's also painfully glib and self-conscious, and it alienates you from the characters. The second is the abundance of ludicrous contrivances Happy Endings has instead of a story, all of which make little sense and bear almost no relation to the way actual people behave.

From a moral standpoint, I'm prepared to give Don Roos a little credit here. We've seen these quirky little independent films about relationships and whatnot so many times that you have to do something to make your story original and fresh. I like that this guy doesn't want to churn out the same thing you've seen a thousand times already. He's trying, is what I'm saying. Trouble is, there's a fine line between original and improbable. Push the line too far and what you get is a film where a bunch of daft stuff happens that no real person can relate to.

The acting all around is first rate, particularly from Lisa Kudrow and Maggie Gyllenhaal. If there's one thing Don Roos does well, it's writing decent parts for talented actresses, so a big thumbs up for that. Forget all this wife or girlfriend nonsense - Don Roos is not down with that.

That's about it, though. The rest of Happy Endings is a little too self-consciously hip for its own good.

I didn't really know what to expect from this film and it definately doesn't conform to the norm. It has a gentle wit to accompany the acute observations of people's lives that is very moving. The story is excellent and the way the character's interweave is masterfully done. I won't try to discuss the plot as it is too complicated but I will say that this is a film which stays with you for a while afterwards. The acting is superb and the plot thought provoking and very contemporary. I loved this film and would highly recommend.