Tagline: Everybody wants one.
Mamie is being blackmailed. This filmmaker named Nick claims to know Mamie’s son – the one she gave up for adoption – but Nick won’t introduce her to him unless he can film the reunion. Enter Javier, Mamie’s massage therapist boyfriend, who convinces Nick to film him instead. Now they’re all making a movie about massage. And ‘happy endings’…
Charley has a longtime boyfriend named Gil. Their best friends, Pam and Diane, once tried using Gil as a sperm donor. They said his sperm didn’t take, but Charley thinks those control-freak lesbians are lying. Pam and Diane’s two-year-old son looks exactly like Gil. And it’s time to set the record straight…
Jude is pissed. Not at anyone in particular. Just in general. When her cousin kicks her out of the house, Jude shacks up with Otis, who’s still trying to convince his father, Frank, that he’s straight. Frank’s a widower. And he’s rich. So Jude decides to sleep with him, too. Really. The last thing she expected was to fall in love… Just when you thought you knew everything about love and dysfunction, along comes HAPPY ENDINGS, Lions Gate Films’ hilarious and heartfelt new comedy by writer/director Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex, Bounce).
Featuring a talented ensemble cast that includes Tom Arnold, Jesse Bradford, Bobby Cannavale, Sarah Clarke, Steve Coogan, Laura Dern, Lisa Kudrow, Jason Ritter, David Sutcliffe and Maggie Gyllenhaal, HAPPY ENDINGS deftly weaves together multiple stories to create a sharp, witty look at love, family and the sheer unpredictability of life itself. A feast of buried secrets, missed opportunities and welcome second chances, this wildly original comedy proves that the happiest ending of all is the one you least expect.
Happy Endings is a 2005 American film written and directed by Don Roos and starring Tom Arnold, Jesse Bradford, Bobby Cannavale, Steve Coogan, Laura Dern, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Lisa Kudrow and Jason Ritter. The expression “happy ending” is a colloquial term for offering sexual release to a client at the end of a massage.
About the Production
In a Don Roos universe, people often do the wrong thing first. His characters lie, manipulate others and give in to lesser impulses; yet their genuine desire for love and acceptance always makes them appealingly human. It is this idiosyncratic blend of edginess and heart that has won Roos, the writer/director of THE OPPOSITE OF SEX and BOUNCE, such a fervent following.
With HAPPY ENDINGS, his latest writing/directing effort, he continues to explore the many guises of dysfunction, spinning a funny, unpredictable ensemble story that examines deceit – and love – at play in a variety of relationships.
“Most of the time people cover up their vulnerabilities and their weaknesses and what they really want out of life,” says Roos. “Nobody wants to look weak. So most of my stories are about people trying not to look weak.”
“What I always respond to with a Don Roos script is his characters are just so damaged,” says Lisa Kudrow, who plays Mamie, an emotionally scarred woman who gave up a child for adoption as a teenager. “They don’t even have the first clue about where the damage is or what to do to heal it or fix it. So they just go out of their way to spin it into something else.”
Indeed, audiences accustomed to the faultless protagonists of typical Hollywood films will no doubt be surprised by Roos’s characters’ behavior. Laura Dern, who is no stranger to portraying challenging heroines in films like CITIZEN RUTH, believes Roos’s frankness is precisely what makes HAPPY ENDINGS so successful. “The best comedies are the ones that are honest. That’s where the humor comes from,” says the actress, who plays Pam, a lesbian who is raising a two-year-old son with her lover.
“Given that the movie does deal with tolerance and broadening our concepts of honesty, family, friendship, it takes irreverence and also pretty brutal honesty to get to what we need to get to within ourselves.”
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
Happy Endings (2005)
Directed by: Don Roos
Starring: Lisa Kudrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Steve Coogan, Laura Dern, Jesse Bradford, Jason Ritter, David Sutcliffe, Sarah Clarke, Amanda Foreman, Sarah Clarke, Kim Morgan Greene
Screenplay by: Don Roos
Production Design by: Richard Sherman
Cinematography by: Clark Mathis
Film Editing by: David Codron
Costume Design by: Peggy A. Schnitzer
Set Decoration by: Matthew Flood Ferguson
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, language and some drug use.
Distributed by: Lionsgate Films
Release Date: July 15, 2005
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