Product Details

• Actors: Sally Hawkins
• Number of discs: 1
• Studio: Miramax
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001FB55U8
• For more information about "Happy-Go-Lucky [Blu-ray]" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Plot, Good; Character Study, Great, February 3, 2009

By 

M. Thomsen "mark1958" (San Pedro, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Happy-Go-Lucky (DVD)

This is all about Poppy, played by Sally Hawkins. Single in London. Positive, cheerful, and generally embodies the title of the movie. Every situation is to be faced with good spirit, a light attitude, and cheer.

At the beginning it seems that she will overrun a challenge like a tank running over a building in a WW II flick. Smiles. Banter. Humor. Irrepressible. Even when alone.

The challenges grow. A problem student. A vagrant in a deserted part of town. A doctor visit. A dance instructor with issues.

And then the new champion for Driving Instructor From Satan, played by Eddie Marsan. These scenes are classics. As in many movies confrontation is important to good comedy or drama. The theater I saw this in was laughing its collective heads off. The driving lessons make me smile even as I type this.

How Poppy reacts to each challenge - and how others react to Poppy - is the core of this movie. The plot is mostly a string of episodes. Mike Leigh does an outstanding job directing, finding a second level to each situation. Funny and happy. But also thoughtful and a little gritty.

Sally Hawkins should be up for an Oscar in 2009, but that is a whole other discussion.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hyperactive happiness is put to the test, October 4, 2008

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is one of those quirky British films that won't be remembered as one of the best you've ever seen, but is worth a look and four stars because, as I said to my wife after our advance screening, it "has its 5-star moments".

The protagonist is Poppy (Sally Hawkins), a frenetically happy, 30-year old, primary school teacher living in London's northern reaches with her roommate Zoe (Alexis Zegerman). Poppy's good humor is so inexorable that, while it serves her well with her young charges, it often abrades the patience of adults. Only Zoe is imperturbable.

As with other films of the genre (Local Hero, The Full Monty, Calendar Girls, Waking Ned Devine), the plot revolves not so much around events as the personalities and eccentricities of the players.

The single best overall performance is perhaps that by Eddie Marsan as the scarily intense Scott, Poppy's driving instructor, whose deep-seated, smoldering anger at the world reflects a tightly wound mental state 180 degrees opposite that of his student. Confined together in the small space of Scott's car, an explosion seems always but a hair-trigger's pull away.

Definitely, the single best scene, the one that had the audience in stitches, is played by Karina Fernandez as a Flamenco teacher, when she attempts to describe to and inculcate in her class of adult students the passion necessary for the dance. Talk about meltdown!

The conflict, if it can be called such, of the story comes as Poppy's happy-go-luckiness scrapes up against the unhappy lives and internal turmoil of others: the mentally unstable derelict she encounters under a bridge in a bleak industrial section of the city, her pregnant and subliminally unhappy younger sister, a bullying and disturbed boy in her class, and, above all, Scott. As the last scene fades into the film credits, the viewer is left wondering if Poppy's felicitous worldview will survive life. One suspects it will.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You may love it - you may not, April 20, 2009

By 

Mark J. Fowler "Let's Play Two!" (Jacksonville, Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Happy-Go-Lucky (DVD)

Happy-Go-Lucky stars Sally Hawkins as Poppy, a 30 year old London elementary school teacher who is so cheerful she makes Pollyanna look like Eeyore.

The film doesn't follow any Hollywood formula, so here is fair advance warning. You may not like "Happy-Go-Lucky" if:
1. You dislike "British Humor".
2. You have difficulty following non-American English.
3. You dislike films without a definite or obvious "plot".

There is a decidedly British genre that I would loosely describe as "get a handful of interesting characters together and follow them a few days". (I recently watched "The Station Agent" and although the characters and setting were different, it shares this genre.)

Poppy isn't just cheerful. She finds almost any situation a suitable one for a joke and a laugh. In the opening she rides her bicycle to a bookstore where she tries unsuccessfully to get the attention of the bearded young man who works there. She goes outside to discover her bicycle has been stolen. She is disappointed and says "I didn't even get to say good-bye!"

The stolen bike leads Poppy to decide to take driving lessons. She hires the increasingly serious and severely humorless Scott, played by Eddie Marsan. Some of the funniest scenes in the film and certainly the most serious one take place during Poppy's driving lessons.

Poppy has shared a flat with Zoe for ten years, and she has two younger sisters who don't share her irrepressible cheery disposition.

I could give you the entire "plot" and although I wouldn't be giving you many "spoilers", I also wouldn't be giving you much encouragement to watch the movie.

The Mrs. and I laughed out loud several times. Go back to my short list of disqualifiers. If you're NOT disqualified, you might like it.