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Tulley, Natalie and Levine discuss love,
life and the value of alcohol.
Happy Hour
Review written by: Alex Sandell
From Days of Wine and Roses to Leaving Las Vegas, directors and screenwriters have been interested in failed romances featuring doomed alcoholics. With Happy Hour, Director Mike Bencivenga has reinvented the genre and Leading Actor Anthony LaPaglia has redefined the cinematic soak. Together, with help from a terrific supporting cast and crew, the two have created a film like no other.
Tulley (Anthony LaPaglia) was on his way to becoming a living literary legend. Instead, he chose alcoholism and a drab job as a copy editor at a New York advertising firm (“that strange netherworld of mild tortures where time itself has long since given up bothering to pass”). Tulley isn't a mean drunk. He isn't abusive when he delights in too much drink. He simply likes the short-term effects of consuming vast quantities of alcohol.
The highpoint of Tulley’s day is drinking himself silly during happy hour at his favorite bar with his best friend Levine (Eric Stoltz) at his side. Like Pavlov’s dogs, the two wait eagerly for Kelly the bartender (played to surly perfection by Michael Mulheren) to ring his rusty old bell letting his patrons know that the discount drinks may now be bought up and slammed down.
Levine, never able to keep up with Tulley at the bar, is the impeccable enabler to Tulley’s unblemished drunk. Levine is too starry-eyed over Tulley’s talent too stop him from wasting it. It isn't until Tulley notices Natalie the schoolteacher (Caroleen Feeney) sitting beside him and matching him drink for drink that his life becomes more complex than a bottle of booze and a convivial best friend.
Before meeting Natalie, Tulley was more than ready to go to the grave with a half-baked grin and bulbous red nose that would do Rudolph proud. He had fun drinking and wasn’t about to let a little thing like an early death slow him down. Although Natalie isn’t able to stop his boozing, she does succeed in putting the man she’s falling in love with face to face with his potential at the same time that his doctor reveals that he’s standing at death’s door.
The range LaPaglia displays throughout the film is incredible. He’s better at playing a drunk than most people are at being one. Caroleen Feeney is perfectly cast as his concerned but fun-loving girlfriend. The drunken sex scene between the two toward the beginning of the film is a quirky awkward, atypical romantic moment similar in feel to the classic lobster scene in Annie Hall (like Annie Hall, Happy Hour takes place in New York). Eric Stoltz is excellent as the consummate best friend. Robert Vaughn is so good as Tulley’s unsympathetic father, you’ll want to throw things at the scene whenever he’s on. But it’s LaPaglia’s performance that you’ll come back to time and time again.
He doesn’t play a manipulative drunk like Jack Lemmon's Joe Clay in Days of Wines and Roses or a suicidal soak like Nic Cage's Ben Sanderson in Leaving Las Vegas. But like Lemmon, Anthony LaPaglia deserves an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Like Cage, he deserves to win the award. His warm and likable portrayal of an alcoholic makes everything that his character goes through that much more believable and causes it all to hit that much closer to home.
Happy Hour is a twisted form of magic. The screenplay by Mike Bencivenga and Richard Levine is a marvel. With sharp dialogue and a plot that constantly walks the fine line between comedy and drama, the film is that rarest of pleasures; one that is as real as life itself. Although the movie’s subject matter grows increasingly dark, the picture keeps its sense of humor. Only a handful of screenwriters can handle melodrama without it becoming bogged down by the melodramatic.
Happy Hour is that special film that reminds me why I haven't given up on movies. It's a beautiful piece of work with a screenplay so genuine, a director so bewitching and actors so magnetic that it causes a person to want to get up and cheer over being alive and in the right place at the right time.
Sadly, if you haven't attended the three or four film festivals where this movie played, or if you aren’t a critic who’s been lucky enough to see an advance screener, you haven't been given a chance to spend 90 minutes with Happy Hour. This movie needs to be released for everyone to see. A majority of moviegoers being blocked from watching a film as precious as this one isn't a happy thought at all.
On a scale of 1-10?
9
What does this rating mean? Everyone rates things differently. Your "5" could be my "7," or vice-versa. Find out what MY rating means by clicking here.
Agree? Disagree? Feeling bored and wanna write a letter that you'll probably never get a response to? Email me at alex@juicycerebellum.com
COMING SOON - Reviews of The Chronicles of Riddick and lots of other stuff!
