Happiness For Beginners involves a recently divorced Helen (Ellie Kemper) embarking on a days long hike to discover herself. She unexpectedly sees Jake (Luke Grimes), her brother Duncan’s (Alexander Koch) longtime best friend, at the seminar for their hike. They’re frustrated with each other, but you won’t believe this for a moment. They’re totally suppressing their attraction. They’re totally going to overcome this and fall in love. If you’re willing to accept sweet, simple cliches like that, then you’ll enjoy this sweet, simple ride.
Without categorically summarizing her career, Kemper has at least made a name for herself with an over-the-top, silly naivety. In 2011’s Bridesmaids, she played a newlywed, so fresh to the world that she asked an airline stewardess for “a glass of alcohol.” However, it’s the iconic (and unbreakable) Kimmy Schmidt that most know her from. A woman who spent 15 years in a bunker, kidnapped by a reverend who convinced her and others they were the sole survivors of a nuclear holocaust, it’s a fish out of water story. The show had some great writing, but wouldn’t have worked nearly as well without Kemper’s talents.
Now, stepping away from silly naivety, she plays the straight woman for the film’s other silly personalities to bounce off. There’s Sue (Julia Shiplett), who takes a vow of silence she never follows through on. There’s the purportedly ditzy blonde, Kaylee (Gus Birney), whose bizarreness is established when she first speaks, when she tells us she’s partaking in the hike to overcome her fear of wood. The flamboyant Hugh (Nico Santos) both oversteps boundaries, and exhibits an inability to read the room from the beginning. In his intro, he feigns humility in saying he’s old enough not to discuss his age, and immediately undercuts that feigned humility when he points to Helen and says, “she knows what I’m talking about.” He’s annoying, and the right kind of annoying for a movie like this: the kind of annoying that you know you’ll grow to care about.
The douchey experienced hiker, Mason (Esteban Benito), gloats about his skills from the get go, rubbing how much better he is than everyone else in their faces. Unlike Hugh, he never once feigns humility, which makes a later act of humility all the more powerful. The two other characters that are closest to not being silly archetypes would be Windy (Shayvawn Webster), who’s mostly there to fawn over Jake, and the slightly uppity but necessarily passionate guide, Becket (Ben Cook). The nice thing about Windy is that she creates some conflict in Helen’s romantic pursuits, but she never escalates to antagonism. She’s a nice person who likes Jake, and is oblivious to Helen’s own romantic interests.
Meanwhile, if Helen is the straight woman that highlights the ensemble’s silliness, Beckett is the expert who highlights everyone’s flaws, Helen included. There’s a great moment when Beckett gathers the group to point out Helen’s mistake (this might be his third time doing so). When the experienced Mason mocks Helen for her mistake, Beckett then uses Mason as an example of another flaw: that of impatience. Mason’s arrogance puts a lot of pressure on the less experienced hikers, something that made Helen feel insecure about discussing her mistake, which only worsened it.
They’re all types, and they’re all effective types. They play off each other well enough so that the hike is never dull. Kaylee, for instance, is the first to put Mason in his place, as this purportedly ditzy blonde comfortably talks about her skills in trading metals. She’s not gloating, just interested in the world, making her an effective foil for the arrogant Mason.
The hike is not without danger, but it’s a simple danger. A character injures themselves, and they must get this character to an evac point. Helen must prove herself and get this character to safety, but, after this character is safe and in an ambulance, the hike resumes as normal. I might have expected some big storm to separate Jake and Helen and turn the film into a slightly grander romantic comedy, but this expectation was, thankfully, fruitless. Happiness for Beginners does acknowledge the danger of being in nature, sure, but it doesn’t take it too far. Rather, its goals are dedications to some of life’s simple pleasures: fresh air, a nice view, a nice walk, and distinct personalities bouncing off of each other. It does this, and it does so in a pleasurable, simple way.
If the film has a flaw, one that springs to mind would be Jake’s motives for the hike. Telling Helen he signed up for the hike weeks ago, this is proven to be a lie, when Hugh tells her Jake signed up a day after he learned Helen was partaking, and the film presents this as a romantic gesture. This feels less like a distinct problem for this particular movie, and just an act of real-life ickiness that needs a dash of suspension of disbelief for a romantic comedy. (The Onion article “Romantic Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested” springs to mind.)
If you can allow that suspension of disbelief, then Happiness for Beginners is right for you.
