 Happy, Texas (1999) In a tried and true and tired scenario, Steve Zahn and Jeremy Northam are convicts who accidentally find themselves on the run after a car crash. They wind up in small-town Happy, Texas, where they are mistaken for a gay couple who are expected to help put on a children's beauty pageant and rocket Happy into the beauty pageant stratosphere. Northam, the smart, slick one, sees an opportunity to make a fast buck using the pageant as a distraction while they rob the town bank. Zahn, the wild-eyed muttering dumb one, half-heartedly goes along with the scheme. You can pretty much connect the dots from here: both men discover new aspects of themselves while preparing for the pageant, and fall in love with the small town life, even while planning the robbery and getting into one comic mishap after another. Northam develops a relationship with the tomboyish bank owner (Ally Walker) while Zahn discovers his feminine side, teaching little girls dance routines and sewing their costumes while trying to cover his attraction to their doe-eyed teacher, Illeana Douglas. Throw in a small-town sheriff, played by William H. Macy, whose own motives are questionable, a third escaped convict out for revenge, and the requisite posse looking for the boys, and you have yourself an old-fashioned mistaken-identity comedy. The crazy thing is, for the most part it actually works, thanks primarily to the actors, who are, with only one exception, extremely talented. Zahn and Macy in particular inhabit their roles completely—and while Macy is by far the more accomplished actor and has deservedly earned a high degree of recognition, Zahn is not far behind, and needs only to tone down the over-the-top schtick to be counted among the best comedic actors around. The British Northam is fine as the con man, if a little boring, but his performance is brought down by Ally Walker, from "The Profiler," who is very uninteresting, looks haggard, and makes it hard to believe he's fallen for her. By contrast, Illeana Douglas is, as usual, great. And should I repeat myself in saying that Macy is an utterly brilliant actor, no less so in what at first appears to be a throwaway role? Oh yes, and Paul Dooley has a small role as well. The man is a consistently good actor but could really use a personal trainer or he'll start getting typecast as crusty old fat men instead of the leading action roles he truly deserves. OK, so if I put away my resistance to formula comedies for just a minute and remind myself that I really liked Billy Madison—Happy, Texas is among the better recent small comedies, despite being so conventional. Not only did I laugh despite myself, the audience (granted, a consistently generous audience of SAG members) was in a virtual uproar for most of the film. I don't anticipate this being anyone's favorite movie of all time, but it'll have a nice long life on video, where Paul Dooley fetishists can edit the hot Paul Dooley action into one long, hot best-of Paul Dooley video.
Review by Crimedog |