‘Happiness for Beginners’ Review: Ellie Kemper Leads a Sweet but Slight Rom-Com That’s a Little Light on Laughs
variety.comCatherine Bray Sitcom star Ellie Kemper (“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” “The Office”) gets the chance to subvert her usually chipper screen persona in “Happiness for Beginners,” writer-director Vicky Wright’s third feature and — following 2020’s Leslie Bibb starrer “The Lost Husband” — her second adaptation of a Katherine Center novel.
Kemper plays dour divorcee Helen, who as the film opens is about to head off on a group hiking vacation, in the hope that it might snap her out of her post-split blues.
Unbeknownst to Helen, her brother’s hunky doctor friend Jake (Luke Grimes) has booked himself onto the same trip, for reasons that are crystal-clear to the audience from the moment an exasperated Helen tells him, “God, you’re so annoying!” We can tell immediately that we are operating under the jurisdiction of romantic comedy rules from the fact that Helen does not find Jake appearing unannounced on her trip — with only a thinly sketched excuse for this wild coincidence — to be stalker-ish red flag behaviour.
Pretty much everything in “Happiness for Beginners” is very polite: A raunchier romance, after all, might have opted for a booze cruise or trip to Las Vegas in place of hiking the Appalachian trail.
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