Terribly Happy (2008)

I wanted to but couldn't!

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

.............................................................from Pasto,Colombia...Via: L.A. CA., CALI, COLOMBIA and ORLANDO, FL NO SPOILERS HERE! My wife, Carmen, and I saw 11 films at the 2009 Orlando Film Festival. Three TITLES were truly exceptional: HERE and THERE, The CRIMSON MASK and TERRIBLY HAPPY. This Danish film noir/psychological thriller deftly redefines Creepy.Others have compared HAPPY to several films. From the depths of the ID comes this relatively obscure comparative reference: Think DEAD and BURIED (1981)...sans Zombies! If you like predictable, you most definitely don't want to watch HAPPY. Each and every time HAPPY comes to an A) B) C) or D) multiple-choice crossroads juncture pivotal point, it consistently offers the viewer NONE Of The ABOVE as the appropriate thread option! At the heart of HAPPYs appeal: A deliciously intriguing and universally cross-cultural screenplay/story by Director Henrik Ruben Genz and Dunja Gry Jensen. Hearsay has it Copenhagen cop Robert (Jakob Cedergren, in an amazing but tautly low-key characterization) completely lost it a few months back when he caught his wife in bed with his partner/best friend. He drew his service hand-gun, waved it around threateningly at the philandering pair, but never really got beyond a little saber-rattling...Except for firing off a round into the ceiling. This was enough for 3 months treatment in a loony bin.Upon release, the force prudently decided it best to send Robert to the apparently idyllic small, out of the way, town of Skarrild, far from the Capital, where Nothing ever happens! A bit slow-moving at the onset, HAPPY soon dishes out one plot twist after another. When it isn't creeping you out...Happy is busy pulling the rug out from under your proverbials! With great ensemble performances, this little Danish film comes highly recommended...Just be forewarned: The ONLY TERRIBLY HAPPY people associated with this production are the viewers!9*.....ENJOY/DISFRUTELA!Any comments, questions or observations, in English o en Español, are most welcome! [email protected]

Few posters here have referenced American crime novelist Jim Thompson, but this is his turf, unquestionably. Small town. Everyone knows everyone. Secrets are buried by the residents. Town has a bad person. The local police force (one man, in this case) get pulled in by the town's sinister past. A murder is covered up. But then there's another, related, murder. Suspicion grows exponentially."Terribly Happy" begins with the punishment posting of a Copenhagen cop to a distant village because of something bad he has done (we learn the details later). This village is in the nastiest possible place, Jutland, a part of Denmark that looks like Kansas, but without the corn and loaded with swampy bogs. Really depressing. The cop, Robert (Jakob Cedergren), tries his best to bring professional law enforcement to the town, but is almost immediately in trouble over his head.This is a town that doesn't cotton to strangers. It doesn't help when the town nympho, an abused wife who is married to the town bully, starts coming on to him. This is the kind of town where if someone talks to someone in public, everyone knows immediately. These are not friendly people and they love to gossip."Terribly Happy" works as a primo noir because it is utterly plausible, right down to the bitterly ironic ending. This is an outstanding crime drama.

Terribly Happy (Frygtelig lykkelig) This Danish Noir Crime film was one of the nominees for best Oscar foreign film 2009 83rd Oscars. It did not win. It is based on the novel by Erling Jepsen. This dark & quirky crime story is set set in a small rural Danish village called Skarrild a town that hides as many secrets as the nearby bog. This Locale is in the only part of Denmark that actually has land adjoining Europe. (the rest are islands) Skarrild South Jutland area is a boggy low lying area north of Germany where the water level is very low. Robert (Jakob Cedergren) has a troubled past in Copenhagen & is re-assigned to a remote Danish town, where he is quickly embroiled in its odd business. Essentially the story of a policeman working punishment duty in the provinces. This dark comedy is reminiscence of Fargo & subject matter is racy with child abuse murder abuse of power wife beating drinking drugs etc. The film is effective, & has a unique feel, though at times it is hodgepodge of genres & stylistic borrowings. The plot (& characters) felt flat & lifeless. The film just did not have the artistic hook that really grabbed me. (Compared to films by fellow Finland director Aki Kaurismaki) The film dour & deadpan film noir but it just did not involve excite or intrigue me. All told heart the film plays like a classic Western: the frontier town, the local bad man, the new marshal, the townspeople, the cute & vulnerable heroine, Ingelise. I hate westerns. Or is this a horror movie?? No is not a horror movie but a comic, ironic witty, well constructed psychological thriller. It still did not make on impression on me. As the story narrows into an increasingly desperate cat-&-mouse game played by Robert & Jorgen following a lethal accident, "Terribly Happy" becomes an allegory of human frailty & corruption, of loneliness & the need to belong. If that makes the movie sound depressingly weighty IT IS. How far will you go to have a sense of belonging? 3 stars

Terribly Happy is a terribly good Danish Oscar submission, remade by the original director, Henrik Ruben Genz, honoring the noir tradition with an off-center hero cop, a small town full of figurative dirt easily hidden by its voracious bog, a blonde femme fatale in the Hitchcock tradition, and a low-key cinematography that captures the desolate, anarchic lowland of South Jute.Jakob Cedergren, in a Guy Pearce Memento turn as a cop reassigned from Copenhagen to Australia, immediately gets caught in the web of lawlessness of a small town that could substitute for any remote stop on an American cinematic Western stage route.As in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil, no good is bound to come of it for citizen or criminal; you can feel the evil in every frame of this thriller whose only flaw is the illogic of its outcomes.