Hector and the Search for Happiness (2014)

Rating: 3/5

I don't like to cry. Life is hard enough in the everyday without watching sad movies and bringing the mood down further. I don't understand the appeal of the cringey 'bring your tissues' captions. Today, I went straight from having the most unflattering passport photos taken to watch a movie starring Simon Pegg about a man's search for happiness, and so was hopeful that I would soon feel enlightened and breezy. I was, in fact, very wrong. Hector and the Search for Happiness made me feel depressed and lethargic, and that really shocked me.

Hector (Simon Pegg) is a psychiatrist with a really quite amazing life. A colossal modern house in the city, a lovely girlfriend who makes him breakfast every morning, one of those swanky dark wood shrink's offices with an extensive collection of Jung, Freud and TinTin literature. Yet Hector is bored of the monotony of his life, and one day whilst tiredly bearing witness to a patient's latest worries, he snaps, insisting there are bigger problems in the world. With this, he decides to set off on a trip to discover the secret to happiness.

His girlfriend Clara (Rosamund Pike) is ridiculously open to the idea, and sends him off with nicely packed bags and plenty of kisses, with the assurance, 'If you're going to do this, do it properly. You have permission.' Throughout his worldwide escapades, Hector seems to interpret this as 'Go and hook up with a different woman on every continent. You have my permission.'

So first he sets off to China (for whatever reason - destination is just as spontaneous as the trip itself) and instantly manages to tick off a fellow air passenger, rich banker Edward (Stellan Skarsgard) with his stupid behaviour in first class, yet they become friends when the plane lands and the two venture off into the big city for a good time. Hector picks up a lovely young student (Ming Zhao) and takes her back to his room. They do a bit of pre-coital, and the only thing that actually puts a stop to their fling is Hector falling asleep. As it played out, I felt weirded out. Why the heck was Hector suddenly acting single? He definitely doesn't get that whole 'permission' thing.

Anyway, after an eventless night together, they go for lunch, where she is quickly and violently whisked off by her pimp, after a three-way scuffle in the streets. We never hear of her again, no matter how much we expect to. No fear, Hector's off to Africa (as if that's a country and not an entire continent. Where exactly in Africa? I have no idea.) and after spending a little time with his old friend Michael, volunteering at his hospice, and again making frienemies, this time with a rich coke manufacturer Diego (Jean Reno), finds himself carjacked and kidnapped by local gangsters.

This is where it gets particularly depressing. Many many movies over the years have turned the usually serious topic of kidnap into hilarious ordeals, but this one is dismal. The thugs imprison Hector in a decrepit cell and 'leave him to rot'. We quickly watch our hero go crazy, making friends with a rat and sobbing as he squats over a bucket. The gangsters eventually come in, holding him at gunpoint and shooting his pet rat dead. This is no comedy held-at-gunpoint. Hector screams hysterically, cries and begs, and a tone of utter despair upon the poor rat's execution. The scene is totally grim, totally depressing, and actually made me cry for all the wrong reasons. Simon Pegg, a famed and appreciated comedian, crying very convincingly for not the last time in this movie, is an utterly upsetting sight. Some may argue that the scene had to have been well made if it produced such a reaction. This is true; it is well made. But it doesn't belong, it is just too dark.

So somehow Hector is released and dumped on a roadside by the gangsters (yet I don't see why they would go out of their way, burn fuel and let him go, when it would be so much quicker, easier and more routine to kill him.) and finally feels something close to happiness, just because he is still alive. So he runs back to the town he is staying in (how he finds it, I don't know) and parties with all the locals. And again, makes advances towards one of the lovely young women. This one doesn't come to fruition either, but seriously Hector, we need to define 'permission'!

To top off this entire trip, Hector decides to conclude in LA, where his first love Agnes (Toni Collette) now lives with her husband and kids. The husband is totally cool when he comes home to find this guy 'he's heard so much about' but never actually met in his pool with his kids. I found this a little odd. But Hector and Agnes talk about old times, she tells him not to think about what might have been, and he attends a lecture with her, his spirits thoroughly dampened. The lecturer is Happiness Scientist Dr Coleman (a lovely role for Christopher Plummer) and backstage the couple try out his mood-testing machine.

The ending is all swelly and romantic and Simon Pegg cries his heart out again, which totally stops the routine from being happy. The ending's not totally important. Does Hector find happiness? Eh, sort of, but it's one of those had-it-all-along things. I suppose the journey is meant to be the point, but the journey was sadder and less exciting than the ending. It's all rather random, and skimmed through. At times, an entire day or night is represented by one or two seconds. There are little bits and scenes that are quite incidental, mashed into bigger, slightly more important ones, and it's all intercut with shots of savannas and mountains. It just doesn't feel very well put-together. It feels jaggedy and disjointed.

And in terms of comedy, or in fact any light-heartedness at all, it is mostly absent. You don't even really laugh. At the most, there's a smile, and the movie's funniest part is actually from a little African boy in the hospital. I feel Simon Pegg has been used to a slightly manipulating degree here: the material hangs in the balance between comedy and drama, but isn't really either, and so if Pegg was opting for more a serious role this time around, he hasn't really achieved it. And that's not his fault. I love Simon Pegg. He and Nick Frost's Cornetto trilogy is possibly the finest offering of British comedy in recent years. I'd have liked a little more certainty of Pegg's role in the movie for all he could have brought to it.

So, Hector and the Search for Happiness is a passable movie, unsure of its genre or audience, but those flexible movie-goers out there will probably enjoy it. It's not bad, but it's unfortunately not that good either, and it definitely didn't make me feel happy, or any more certain of how to become so.