MovieChat Forums > The Happy Ending (1970) Discussion > This movie really sucks!

This movie really sucks!

posted 15 years ago by inneroscator2
21 replies | jump to latest

Jean Simmons plays a frustrated bored housewife who starts engaging in bizarre flighty behavior. Problem is she has no real reason to other than hubby spending too much time at the office other than that he's a perfect gentleman. The whole movie has a detached atmosphere to it and it is not helped by the sound. You cannot really hear the dialogue at times. You have Tina Louise, Karen Steele and assorted other women playing unhappy suburbanite women. Hell, there is even a reference to a silicon breast implant. Anyway, the apparent point of this movie is Jean Simmons increasingly narcissistic behavior. Then she starts taking vacations and meets up with Shirley Jones and...Lloyd Bridges! I would suppose that Shirley Jones was willing to appear in this crap because she won a best supporting actress oscar for playing prostitute Lulu Baines under Richard Brooks' direction in Elmer Gantry...but just why Lloyd Bridges decided to appear in this as Jones' paramour defies comprehension. But they do make a lovely couple and Miss Jones is most definitely hot. Why is it that during the course of their careers every actor and actress in Hollywood feels at some point that they have to make a really awful movie in order to display their dramatic range? For Jean Simmons it is this one. Dick Shawn is in it....but who cares. This tripe is not even a good slice of late 1960s marital life and mores like Norman Lear's much better and far more entertaining Divorce, American Style with Dick Van Dyke and Debbie Reynolds...which also sports Jean Simmons in a supporting role. I guess Miss Simmons was somewhat fixated on marital discourse in the late 1960s. Having had the poor judgment to marry a flakey left-wing director like Brooks I don't doubt it.

[–] bobo-29 15 years ago

Gawd, you people even have to bring your thug right wing politics into the review of a 40 year old film. And of course pass judgement on someone else's marriage. Typical of fascists.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] bobo-29 15 years ago

"This movie really sucks!" Brilliant , incisive analysis. Duhhh.

[–] kino66 15 years ago

This movie did not suck. I liked it very much. It was kind of an American version of "Scenes From A Marriage". Of course the characters were flawed & we watch them as they F-up their lives & then try to make repairs.

If this movie sucked, then so did Hedda Gabler, so skip Ibsen & Bergman & stick with Avatar, otherwise your head might explode.

[–] bobo-29 15 years ago

There weren't enough computer generated explosions in the film for these right wing cretins.

[–] ridge-m-1 9 years ago

and enough exposed boobies for their hypocritical, reborn sexual attitudes.

[–] B_Movie_Blues 15 years ago

Met with a sharp, Siskel & Ebertesque response by Bobo!

[–] Lavitanuova2 15 years ago

"Gawd, you people even have to bring your thug right wing politics into the review of a 40 year old film. And of course pass judgement on someone else's marriage. Typical of fascists"

Gawd, what a stupid comment. The film was about the intricacies of marriage and relationships...so it is not unrealistic to comment on the real life difficulties of the players. This is a forum, after all. I doubt you see the hypocricy of your own comments...calling someone a fascist. People...left and right, Liberal and Republican tend to pass judgements PERIOD. They just tend to do it over different issues.

[–] bobo-29 15 years ago

The knuckle dragging right wing troll inneroscator2 had to put Brook's politics and his marriage into a discussion of the film. Who the hell is this dork to pass judgement on Brook's marriage?? All you right wing trolls sit in your mother's basements eating Cheetos and posting your vile hate speech even on movie boards. The day that the Party of Newt Gingrich (3 times divorced), David Vitter (whoremeister) and Rudy 911 Giuliani (3 times divorced), Henry Hyde, John Ensign, Bob Livingston and on and on will lecture others on marriage and committment will be a cold day in hell.inneroscator2 apparently has a lot of time on his hands since some of his other posts include such classics as "What left-wing Gen-X types fail to realize... " and "Why liberals defame John Wayne" . Just another Cheetos eating right wing troll, here to provoke. Truly a moron and a crypto-fascist(posting from his mother's basement). He obviously thinks the imdb boards are just another political board like dailykos or redstate, a place to post his bile, venom and hate speech. Not even intelligent enough to be a parody troll. Just another Limbaugh dittohead with the brains of an anchovy.

[–] B_Movie_Blues 15 years ago

Hey Bobo:

The only person spouting insults and hate is you.

Read the above-response and count the insults you typed.

If you don't see it, it sucks to be you.

[–] KingVidor 15 years ago

LOL...Jesus. What a titanically arrogant, hate-filled load of pompous garbage.

bobo29, I started to type up a reasoned response to you but there's really no point. You're really just a complete, total a $$hole and there's no point in pretending you're worth engaging in conversation of any kind. Liberals of any age tend to be perennial children who, when confronted with any type of disagreement or obstacle, engage in a screaming, pants-wetting tantrum worthy of a two year old child.

I hope your demented arrogance and hatred kills you off, the sooner the better.

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.

[–] sfrsez 10 years ago

bobo you cant express yourself either, you ugly retard. plz stop writing and talking, forever

[–] orbit991 9 years ago

Tip of the icebergs bobo, I've seen them politicize much crazier things then films. One was going on how one city had better sport fans because somehow the city was more conservative(in he's mind)then another. Logic doesn't have to enter into it, just tin foil hat thinking.

[–] kyan3125 15 years ago

I agree with you completely note-card. Very good analysis.

[–] inneroscator2 15 years ago

Oh and bobo-28, if I were universally condemning of liberals then explain why I complemented Norman Lear and his "Divorce, American Style" in my initial post.

[–] inneroscator2 15 years ago

I too very much agree, note-card. A very dead on analysis. You summed it up perfectly. You can't really appreciate Mary's "rebellion" because the poor dolt she's married to has not a clue to why she is even drinking. She's bored. Good reason to start acting bizarre. The man cared enough about his wife to be concerned about her making an alcoholic out of herself....plus you got this very disloyal housekeeper conspiring with the wife to con the poor shmoe. She faults him for her unhappiness and yet she is living in an upper middle class surburban house and a pretty nice one at that. There really is no point to the movie other than if every second of a late sixties american marriage is not a narcissistic odyssey it's the husband's fault.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] Louisville88 15 years ago

I agree. If this movie showed anything it's that selfishness ruins marriage. We all get bored at some point. Doe sthat mean we run away from problems? No. Mary surrounded herself with all the other unhappy women who were so bored. A person made the comment that she should have a job. Jobs don't fix the problem. In teh movie Revolutionary Road, Kate Winslet thinks that the role switch will make life oh so good~ but it doesn't happen. We don't see her dream played out so therefore we can only assume, like she does, that it would have worked. Problems go deeper than that. You aren't unhappy cause you don't have a job. You've let yourself get down. You have to fix the problem fromt eh bottom up. It's like your house has some damage on it. Instead of doing waht needs to be down and replacing what's broken, you paint over it. Yeah, that new paint job looks nice. However, the problem is still there and pretty soon it reamerges. She needed to fix herself and talk to her husband. Not keep it bottled up so that in the heat of battle she can throw out a complaint and you assume that's taking care of it. "I told him! Why doesn't he fix it?" As for their sex life, they're in their late 30's (Jean Simmons was 40) so your sex life wont be the same as it was when you were in your ealry 20's. News flash! Your body kinda tires down so the fact that she expected the sex life they had when they were dating and just married wont be happening. You also change as a person. Anywho, I'm done. I saw this movie last night and wasn't happy.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] norberte 13 years ago

Love jean Simmons, but not this movie. It pulled me in but after a while it turned boring and disappointing. This was not a good vehicle for her.

[–] 9 years ago

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