Another Happy Day (2011)

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

I mean, how many films out there you can find about dysfunctional families, drug abuse, self harm, loneliness, fear? There are so many.BUT, let me say a few other things about this movie. The cast is so great and well directed that this movie stands up dramatically above many movies I've seen of the same genre. There are so many characters, so many different personalities and all have their segment in the movie.The script was more developed than most drama-comedies out there and I think it contained a lot of situations that we don't often get to see or perhaps they're usually over simplified.I think that Ellen Barkin (I love her work since DownbyLaw, aw I know her words of that movie by heart) really gave an astonishing performance. I felt a lot for her character here, her deep sadness, loneliness, frustration and strength too. I felt like even though she tried so hard to make things work some things weren't going to change, some people would always f**k things up but she persevered, kept trying. Even her mother wasn't even trying to understand her or help her and she had to find all the strength within herself, I really liked this concept and I think many people can relate to it if you watch this movie closely.Ezra was great as always. Kinda often playing the sweet f****d up kid but I guess he's good at it (loved him so much in City Island).Possible flaw: The drug part, Ezra taking the grandfather's drugs twice made me wonder a bit.. I mean after a night of almost overdose is it normal to be all lucid and functional and to like even realize your lips are blue? I would think that after you take a really heavy drug you're like a zombie for a few days, but it would've made the movie even more dramatic if he wouldn't have woken up the next day so I thought it was better this way.I loved the daughter character too. I loved it especially on the part when she found courage to go talk to her dad and asked for some alone time with him and he said not without the wife. The fact she didn't say anything back was really interesting. That was so real, so sad and so relatable and she was good at portraying that, her facial expressions were very communicative.About the wealthiness of that family: American movies most of the times show people living such high quality life in such wealthy families but it's barely how most people actually live in real life. We're all so used to see movies like that, that we got used to the idea that we're just poor and the rest of the people out there must have better houses, like in the movies. We possibly even think that's what we should aim for and it's kinda sad that cinema did this to us.Other than that, I thought this movie was very true in terms relationships. It was very human and showed some real struggle, also, it didn't have a classic happy ending and I really appreciated that.Gosh the step mom's character was so the worst.Anyways, watch it, it's a good drama.

Reading the professional critics' reviews of this powerful film is bewildering. Some of them perfectly reflect my sense of the deep truth it presents; others write it off as promising but fatally flawed.I want to focus on the painful (awful, even) sense of recognition I experienced as I watched. Early in my life I was profoundly and forever influenced by the writing of R. D. Laing, especially "The Politics of Experience." That title is much to the point here. I'm reminded of an old joke: Q. How many people does it take to have politics? A. Three, so that two of them can get together and talk about the other one. Laing portrays a world of interpersonal, ESPECIALLY familial, relationships in which violence is carried out, not in the realm of the physical, but in the realm of experience. He claims, and I say vividly demonstrates, that human beings routinely act with the purpose not merely of controlling others, but with the purpose of controlling how they experience themselves, their reality and the character of their oppressors. In Laing's terms, they are confronted with "forces of violence, masquerading as love."In these terms, "Another Happy Day" is dead on the mark: throughout the film Ellen Barkin's character is tormented by and struggles to overcome the mists and fog of the interlocking attitudes and prejudices that are the residual outcome of her family's progress through time. In terms of this struggle, she emerges as an existential heroine. More power to her; more power to all of us.

I find it odd that nobody has mentioned how hilariously funny this movie is. I also find it odd how many people claim this is somehow unrealistic for the sheer amount of problems this family has. Personally this seemed like exactly the family I was raised in. An extended family of, on the surface, squeaky clean socialites and all American families, while my mother was the person who had a history of therapy and being abused, and my siblings and I all had a number of mental health issues, which ended up causing every gathering to feel like us vs them where we seemed to be dismissed as the broken trouble makers who were too uppity and made too many ripples rather than pretend everything was fine and dandy when daddy broke mommy's nose etc. I loved this movie and was amazed by how real it felt and how funny it was at the same time as being disturbing and full of neurosis. I loved the dancing at the wedding, that's how I feel at those places. It's so weird to see it all without the music and with all the issues bubbling beneath the surface.

An absolutely emotionally drenching film highlighting dysfunction at its worst.By the way, George Kennedy is ailing through most of the film and is practically at death's door. Yet, he is able to go to his grandson's wedding? Come on.Ellen Barkin is the emotionally draining woman whose second husband makes the expression opposites attract most appropriate. Ezra Miller steals the show as the emotionally draining Elliot, her son from her second marriage. Intelligent but beset by problems leading to drug use and smoking, he spends much of the film in verbal outbursts with his mother. Both make excellent use of the four-letter word constantly and it's downright disgusting.Ellen Burstyn is in top form as the matriarch of this brood. She whines and bemoans the fact of what is going on.Thomas Haden Church plays Barkin's first husband who brought up their son Dylan, who is now getting married. His second wife is a memorable Demi Moore who is volatile and has a scene stealing scene with Barkin in the lady's room.This is a film of intense frustration, but yet predictable. Of course, family tragedy at the very end, may very well bring on stability.