Happiness Rings Hollow In 'Hector'

By Joel Wicklund in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 26, 2014 6:00PM

Simon Pegg in "Hector and the Search for Happiness." (Photo: Ed Araquel / Relativity Media)

A movie that wears its good intentions smeared all over its sleeve, Hector and the Search for Happiness pushes greeting card sentimentality down your throat for most of its running time. A very capable cast and a few humorous moments can't hide that this is the feel-good movie equivalent of hardcore porno. All the emotional money shots are there, but you know everybody is faking it.

At least there are some talented fakers involved, including Simon Pegg as Hector, a British psychiatrist whose career and personal life are regimented to an antiseptic degree. Despite living with a devoted, professionally accomplished and beautiful girlfriend (Rosamund Pike, soon to be seen in David Fincher's Gone Girl), some vague sense of lost childhood haunts Hector. And so begins his search for happiness—a global journey of discovery consisting of three stops: China, Africa and Los Angeles.

The China segment is the best, if only because it features Stellan Skarsgard as a businessman with the mantra, "money CAN buy happiness." He is, of course, shown to be kind of wrong, but Skarsgard's portrayal of gruff cynicism is one of the few things to effectively dilute the overbearing, cotton candy sweetness of the movie.

There's a really wrongheaded attempt to add some grit to the African leg of the journey, when mercenaries kidnap Simon. Torture scenes don't play well in a movie that seems to have light fantasy, Walter Mitty-like aspirations. Worse, stereotypes abound, with African characters limited to deadly criminals or gleeful, dancing villagers.

But the worst is saved for last when Simon flies to Los Angeles, potentially to rekindle a romance with an old flame (Toni Collette), only to find her happily married with kids. A poorly sketched academic (Christopher Plummer) doing his own investigation into happiness finds Simon to be a breakthrough subject. This segment is in such a rush to get to its upbeat climax, that you feel like director and co-writer Peter Chelsom became bored with the story himself. Collette and Plummer, two fantastic actors, are utterly wasted in what should be pivotal roles, but feel more like empty cameos.

Pegg does what he can. As he's shown in his best collaborations with director Edgar Wright, Shaun of the Dead and The World's End, he has a unique ability to combine broad comic style with real depths of emotion. But his commitment can't fill in a cipher of a character. Is Hector just afraid of commitment? Bored by life's rituals? Or maybe he just misses his childhood dog, who keeps appearing in dreams and flashbacks. Not a lot for Pegg to hang his hat on here.

Ditto for Pike, whose character's only defining traits are her devotion to Simon and sadness that he seems unable to be equally devoted to her. Pike conveys these emotions in scenes that mainly have her on a cell phone or Skyping with Simon, trying to determine where he stands emotionally. Again, good acting lost in a vacant role.

I haven't read the novel by François Lelord the movie is based on, so I don't know if it succeeds in the grasps at profundity that the film fails so badly in attempting. Chelsom showed some promise early in his career, with the memorably quirky Funny Bones. But though the widely panned Warren Beatty comedy Town & Country is more interesting than its reputation, Chelsom's last feature was Hannah Montana: The Movie, suggesting the director has strayed quite a bit from the potential shown in Funny Bones.

Filmed professionally but generically, Hector and the Search for Happiness is as thin stylistically as it is shallow thematically. The good intentions here haven't exactly paved the way to movie Hell, but it is a kind of purgatory for anyone waiting for an authentic emotional experience.

Hector and the Search for Happiness. Directed by Peter Chelsom. Screenplay by Chelsom, Maria Von Heland and Tinker Lindsay; based on a novel by François Lelord. 114 mins. Rated R. Starring Simon Pegg, Rosamund Pike, Stellan Skarsgard, Toni Collette and Christopher Plummer. Opens Friday at select Chicago area theaters. Opens wider on Oct. 3.