And the key to happiness is"¦ watching Simon Pegg criss-cross the globe to ask random people what the key to happiness is? Pegg plays Hector, a psychiatrist who is unhappy because his quirky patients have too many problems, his life is boring, and his live-in girlfriend loves him too much. Yup, that's the recipe for death and depression.
What makes Hector and the Search for Happiness so watchable is its solid performances by its cast, led by strong work from Pegg and Rosamund Pike. This comedy-drama works well in both genres, but it's clearly meant to lean a bit further on the comedy side. While the film aims to tell a story about a man's earnest quest to answer a question that bugs him, the process of it comes out far more muddled than it intends.
Pegg's character keeps a journal in order to write down the truths of happiness that he learns. And while this is a good way to frame the story from a narrative standpoint, its process comes out unevenly. Some scenes show us an in-depth look of what a "truth" of happiness actually looks like through a scenario in life while other scenes are rushed just to get the point across or have to be shortened so that the film won't drag.
The film works far better when those truths that he learns are from the consequences of his choices rather than a random situation that he's in for comedic effect. Cutting down the travel in the movie would have been another way to explore happiness. This movie intended for us to be a fly on the wall of his journey, and sometimes we are, but ultimately, the film unintentionally ends up being a postcard for an aspect of life people want to have. A life that will still seem too hard to get even though this movie seems to have all the answers.
