Happy Ending

We’ve all seen “Pretty Woman” starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere…at least most of us have… and I wish we’d just leave it at that instead of trying (and trying too hard apparently) to recreate it.

Happy Ending is one of those efforts. It is the story of a middle class man (who actually looks rather broke most of the time) who picks up a prostitute from the side of the road and for whatever reason he hand picks her and then proceeds to fall in love with her. It’s almost like when he went out to that street corner his sole intent was to find a pet project in a prostitute that he would attempt to turn into a lover/”decent member of society”.

This is not a flat out attempt to be rude, but the movie doesn’t really do much in originality, plausibility or performance quality. Monjaro grinds along from scene to scene. I haven’t seen much of his work but from the little I’ve seen of him, he has done better even on his worst days. Chika Ike brings the force, that you never knew was missing in your life, into every scene. There’s too much extra and too much gra-gra that you are almost pleading for her to tone it down before we’re even halfway through the movie.

Is the movie watchable? Yes. The storyline moves along just fine despite the many forces working against it. The best thing about this is that it is not too dragged out. However, I get the feeling that even if this movie was made by Sylvester Obadigie (of Blackberry Babes fame), and dragged through 4-6 parts in that setting, it might still manage to create more of an impression.