Happiness Summary
MPAA Rating: NR
Director: Todd Solondz
Genres: Comedy Drama
Rating:
After his 1995 breakthrough, Welcome to the Dollhouse, director Todd_Solondz was courted by a number of studios to make a big-budget film with top stars. Instead, he chose to make this aggressively dark comedy-drama of perversions and twisted lives. Andy Kornbluth (Jon_Lovitz) explodes with anger after rejection in a restaurant from Joy Jordan (Jane_Adams), one of a trio of middle-class New Jersey sisters. Joy's sister Trish (Cynthia_Stevenson), a housewife with three kids, is married to psychiatrist Bill (Dylan_Baker), who counsels the lonely, overweight Allen (Philip_Seymour_Hoffman). Allen is obsessed with Joy's other sister, the successful poet Helen (Lara_Flynn_Boyle), all the while ignoring the attentions of his seemingly sweet yet overweight neighbor Kristina (Camryn_Manheim). Bill has fantasies of turning an assault rifle on families in a park, masturbates to teen magazine photos, and develops an unhealthy interest in a classmate of his 11-year-old son, Billy (Rufus_Read). After a telephone sales job, Joy moves on to substitute teach at an adult education class, where she falls prey to the advances of an insensitive cabdriver, Vlad (Jared_Harris). Allen's series of obscene phone calls to Helen come to an end when she challenges him to come next door and carry out his sexual threats. Meanwhile, the sisters' parents, Lenny and Mona Jordan (Ben_Gazzara and Louise_Lasser), find their marriage collapsing after 40 years. Lenny has sparked the interest of divorc
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