Happythankyoumoreplease (2010)

If you live the life in films that I do, you will be offended when a filmmaker takes his responsibilities lightly. That is what I felt when watching this.

The writer of the thing has made himself the central character: a writer who has trouble producing a long form work and instead creates short stories.

He (the filmmaker) thinks he can get away with giving us three small stories instead of a real film. The central precedent of course is Altman's 'Short Cuts' made into a subgenre by Anderson. But those men worked on a long form where characters and situations were simply split among several actors. What we have here is three half hour short stories about relationships.

The irony of the thing is that there ate two folds referencing this inadequacy (seen as an acceptable narrative strategy). The first of course is the many references to the on-screen writer (and indeed all the male love interests) to work in long form.

The second is a juvenile who plays mo role whatever except to produce amazing small artworks that we are supposed to accept as genuine art.

I must admit that the craft is well executed. Sequences are tied by songs of the sort sung by one of the (supposedly endearing) characters. There are a lot of feel-good buttons pressed here and the . But the overall effect is that the filmmaker has a superficial understanding of love and story (which means love).

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.