"Happiness Runs" is the story of the children of a hippie cult, growing up to see their parents failures and weaknesses and desperately trying to escape the system while finding themselves repeating the same patterns.
The film gets overwhelmingly metaphorical from time to time and almost desperately tries to be an arthouse title. Unfortunately many of the dream sequences don't really add up. And that's the most general problem of the movie in my opinion.. I do like the idea of presenting a concept like hippie life from the viewpoint of their children and I could imagine that there is quite an amount of truth in this work. But some elements of the story are just so over the top that I cannot but think that they are supposed to be metaphors for something I simply don't get. Maybe I'm just too stupid for this film. However, judging from what others say, it is maybe more a failure of the producers to not really reach the audience. I think that this could be a tremendous movie but it never really takes off through strange characters and other difficult choices.
All in all this is a can watch that has some nice elements and thoughts in it but leaves you wondering more about the movie than about the topic it tries to reflect on.
The film gets overwhelmingly metaphorical from time to time and almost desperately tries to be an arthouse title. Unfortunately many of the dream sequences don't really add up. And that's the most general problem of the movie in my opinion.. I do like the idea of presenting a concept like hippie life from the viewpoint of their children and I could imagine that there is quite an amount of truth in this work. But some elements of the story are just so over the top that I cannot but think that they are supposed to be metaphors for something I simply don't get. Maybe I'm just too stupid for this film. However, judging from what others say, it is maybe more a failure of the producers to not really reach the audience. I think that this could be a tremendous movie but it never really takes off through strange characters and other difficult choices.
All in all this is a can watch that has some nice elements and thoughts in it but leaves you wondering more about the movie than about the topic it tries to reflect on.