Starring Sally Hawkins, Alexis Zegerman. Written and directed by Mike Leigh. (14A) 118 min. Opens Oct 17.
Whether you find Sally Hawkins’ chatterbox protagonist enchanting or grating will likely determine how well you take to Mike Leigh’s new film. Lovers and haters can both agree that there has never been anyone quite like Poppy among the malcontents and miserable sods who have typically populated Leigh’s films since his 1988 breakthrough High Hopes. The winner of the best actress prize at the Berlin film festival, Hawkins is plenty arresting in the role of a relentlessly cheery London schoolteacher who likes a bit of a larf.
The problem with Happy-Go-Lucky is not so much the presence of Poppy as Leigh’s failure to build a movie around her. Instead of a story we get a baggy series of overlong vignettes in which Leigh makes some pretty bloody obvious points about social dynamics via Poppy’s encounters with her boozy pals, her bigoted driving instructor (Eddie Marsden), various middle-class prats and, most cringingly, a tramp who yammers even more than Poppy does.
Some late business with a schoolyard bully and a handsome social worker adds yet more eggs to the batter. Poppy is clearly intended to be a shining beacon of good cheer in this world of woe but everything about Happy-Go-Lucky is so forced and facile, she seems more like a cartoon grotesquerie. But then, maybe it’s not such a surprise that Mike Leigh doesn’t know anything about happy people.