The Movie: Don't let its title fool you, Happiness is a pretty darned depressing movie. And while I generally do like depressing movies, this one just didn't do it for me. I think it started out pretty strong, but I started losing interest, and not even close to the end.

Happiness kinda loosely follows three sisters who are living their lives in different ways -- one is the failed artist type, another is the happily married housewife with kids type, and the third is the successful, shallow type... and in a lot of ways, the three sisters are jealous of each other -- they look at the others and wish they could be happy like them, when really, none of them are truly happy.

And I guess that's what this movie is about... how people are never really happy. And I guess my major problem with this film is that it tried to do the "many interwoven subplots meet together" type thing but failed at it... there were maybe too many different subplots and characters to keep track of and it ended up making the film drag out longer than it really needed to. In fact, I think the entire thread with Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character could have been removed, but maybe the couldn't do that since he was one of the bigger names in the film.

And while this film did fall into the "dark comedy" side of things, I think they went a bit too far in some occasions -- almost as if it seemed like some things were included in the film specifically for shock value without adding anything significant to the story. Don't get me wrong, Happiness definitely had a few moments that had me laughing out loud, but they were pretty darned few, and very far between.

The DVD: The although free from dust, scratches and other problems, the non-anamorphic video transfer exhibited some softness in the overall resolution, yet jaggies from excessive edge enhancement. At times the color seemed oversaturated while at other times I saw poor contrast. Overall, the video was a mess, and the audio was not much better with poor frequency response, and though the audio is listed as being in 2.0 surround, it might as well have been in mono.

As far as special features go, all you get are some text-based filmographies and a trailer... which incidentally shows all of the really good parts of the movie which should give you an idea of just how spread out those good moments are when considering that this film clocks in at well over 2 hours. Overall, I'd have to say it'd be ok to go ahead and pass on Happiness.