Happy Endings

Maggie Gyllenhaal always seems to be good but in this movie you'll see the possibility of an Oscar nomination. Ditto for exceptional actress, Lisa Kudrow, who has stopped passing herself off as a "dumb blonde" character actress and is now proving that she's really one of the best we have.

A warning: If you hate self-consciously stylistic movies which use the split-screen technique and flash cutesy textual comments on the screen, and if you hated Magnolia and American Beauty, then stay away from this movie.

But if you can set all that aside, this movie is a real treat, especially the performance of Maggie Gyllenhaal. I realize that actresses (or actors) which fascinate some people will drive others up the wall. I'm certainly in the former category.

I was introduced to Gyllenhaal in Secretary, where I found her character absolutely irresistible. She has a mysterious ability to be incredibly attractive despite not being drop-dead gorgeous. For example, I find her much more attractive than the admittedly much more beautiful Nicole Kidman.

Why? She just looks like someone it'd really be fun to spend a weekend with fishing and drinking on a houseboat or to go hiking with or to find yourself sitting next to on a Greyhound bus. She might be the most insufferable bitch on Earth, but to me, that's not the way she comes across.

This is one of those interwoven plots movies. Lisa Kudrow plays a woman who had a child by her step brother that he incorrectly thinks she aborted. Actually, she put it up for adoption, and ironically now she's a counselor in an abortion clinic. Her little secret is that she goes for occasional massages and is having an affair with her Hispanic masseur.

Into her life comes an aspiring young filmmaker who wants to make a kickass documentary, and somehow he has figured out that she has a living child out there, now 18, and he'd like to make a movie about their reunion. She would rather not and proposes a more interesting alternative.

Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a free-living and opportunistic young woman who, after giving a good karaoke performance, is asked to join a band by the band's drummer. She agrees and discovers that the boy is supposedly gay and has a wealthy widower father and she sets out to engage in some world class manipulation.

Then there is the pair of gay males whose best friends are a pair of lesbians who just had a baby. One of the males donated sperm which the lesbians claim wasn't used...or was it? Enquiring minds seemingly need to know.

There isn't a boring moment in this movie which begins with a bang (you'll see what I mean) and ends with a fantasy reunion sequence.

After being so effusive above regarding Maggie Gyllenhaal, I really need to say a few words about Lisa Kudrow, who is turning out to be a major dramatic actress. Sure, she has some ticks that reappear in just about every performance, but I find hers much less irritating than Tom Cruise's.

Tom Arnold is turning out to be one of those underrated actors who can be very good in the right role, and this is one of those roles.

Obviously, I'm recommending this movie, but one last comment about Maggie Gyllenhaal: She sings several times in this movie and she's excellent in that way that untrained singers who can stay on key can be. The way those seemingly naive and unschooled Brazilian singers of the bossa nova period sang. Singers like Astrud Gilberto.