This semester, I'm teaching research writing and film to 67 undergraduates. When they turned in their final project topics, I was startled to discover how many wanted to focus on families in the movies: parents trying to escape responsibilities, the fatherless generation, the need for unity among family members, people creating families for themselves when their biological family fails them.

I think this hints at something that preoccupies young adults (and older ones, too): the intense desire to know they are loved, to trust that the love will not go away. It's the kind of love that families are supposed to have for one another. And when traditional families fail them, they're busy constructing new ones, trying to believe that relationships can work.

That's also what lies at the heart of happythankyoumoreplease, and part of what undoubtedly accounts for its warm reception at Sundance last year. Written and directed by Josh Radnor (of CBS's How I Met Your Mother), the film tells the story of a generation in a decidedly un-self-conscious way. It take the themes of the genre often called mumblecore (artistic urban twentysomethings looking for love and life direction) and makes them into something more universal, less self-involved—and, blessedly, less cynical, more full of hope.

Josh Radnor as Sam, Kate Mara as Mississippi

Josh Radnor as Sam, Kate Mara as Mississippi

Sam (Radnor) is 29, a writer who lives in Brooklyn. He writes stories with names like "The Die-Alones" and "The Other Great Thing About Vinyl" and has been shopping his first novel around. On his way to his big meeting with the publisher (Richard Jenkins), he sees a young boy apparently get separated from his family on the subway, and tries to drop him off at the police station. But the boy, Rasheen, won't go, and tags along to Sam's meeting, to which he is now late.

Predictably, the meeting doesn't go well. That night at a party, Sam's best friend Annie (a luminescent Malin Ackerman)—relentlessly upbeat, in spite of, or maybe because of, her alopecia, which has left her hairless—tries to cheer him up. "You're the voice of our generation!" she declares.

Pablo Schreiber as Charlie, Zoe Kazan as Mary Catherine

Pablo Schreiber as Charlie, Zoe Kazan as Mary Catherine

Generation's voice or not, Sam is discouraged. Besides his career troubles, he's trying to attract the attention of a pretty waitress who goes by the moniker Mississippi (Kate Mara), but she's less sure about him, burned by her bad choices in the past. And Rasheen keeps showing up, but Sam's not sure what to do, once he discovers that the boy's home life is likely less than nurturing.

Sam's not alone in his ennui: malaise is settling on his friends, too. Annie's relationship history is dismal and her loser ex-boyfriend has come knocking again. Making matters worse, she's not attracted to the perfectly nice man from work who's sweetly pursuing her, whom she's dubbed Sam No. 2 (Tony Hale). Meanwhile, Sam's childhood friend Mary Catherine (Zoe Kazan) and her boyfriend Charlie (Pablo Schreiber) find their lengthy relationship turning a bit stormy as they debate a move from New York to Los Angeles in pursuit of Charlie's career dreams and try to decide what their future looks like.

Article continues below

While the universal artist pursuits of Radnor's characters may seem a bit forced—they're all writers or painters or musicians—they're also very real people, trying to learn to be adults in a world that is primed to let them live in a sort of perpetual adolescence. On the crest of their thirties, they're worried that while they once dreamed of being extraordinary, they may turn out to just be very ordinary.

Malin Akerman as Annie

Malin Akerman as Annie

Unfortunately, the screenplay, while funny and sweet in the right places, does stumble a bit; the characters make too many over-earnest speeches to one another. But the strength of happythankyoumoreplease (named for a sort of life mantra of gratefulness that Annie's adopted on advice of a cab driver) is its characters' relationships, which—romantic or platonic—ring utterly true.

Movies that portray authentic relationships built on trust, friendship, and love—sustained by commitment that has the legs to last a lifetime—are rare, and that's because those relationships are rare in real life, too. (Two unusually good models are in Sam Mendes's Away We Go and Mike Leigh's deeply moving Another Year.) Which brings us back to the generational pulse underneath the narrative, and to what I see in my both my undergraduates and my own twentysomething contemporaries. Our models, both in romance and friendship, have too often been found lacking, subsisting on convenience and mutual interests and disintegrating when those bases fade away.

Radnor (right) puts on his director's hat

Radnor (right) puts on his director's hat

ButRadnor's characters want to believe that truly caring for another person isn't just for the sake of having fun for the weekend or finding a friend who makes us feel better about our failings. No: deciding to love another person, to be part of their life, is what shapes us and builds us into full human beings. These young people, like many of their generation, are yearning for and grappling back toward the possibility of commitment, in its many shapes. In some cases it's tiny and a tenuous few days, and sometimes it's much longer—but they're ready to insist on it, knowing instinctively, even when operating off a misguided moral compass, that a hookup is no way to build a life.

Article continues below

And, sometimes, just maybe, it can even work. As Mississippi tells Sam, he's dwelling in a short story, but she's ready for the novel.

Talk About It

Discussion starters
  1. What do you think of Sam's choices regarding Rasheen? What purpose does Rasheen serve in Sam's life? How does this purpose change?
  2. Has a relationship changed you in a profound way?
  3. Sam No. 2 pursues Annie despite her reluctance. Have you ever put your own happiness on the line to express love to another person? How does Christ's love—pursuing us when we do not love him—give us a model for sacrificial love?
  4. What makes for a strong friendship? A strong romantic relationship? Where do these overlap?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

happythankyoumoreplease is rated R for language. Most of the characters talk like urban twenty-somethings—which is to say, there are plenty of profanities, including f-bombs, though not unrealistically. Various unmarried characters live and sleep together (committed or not). A couple of characters get drunk together.

Happythankyoumoreplease
Our Rating
3 Stars - Good
Average Rating
 
(not rated yet)ADD YOURSHelp
Mpaa Rating
R (for language)
Genre
Directed By
Josh Radnor
Run Time
1 hour 40 minutes
Cast
Josh Radnor, Malin Akerman, Zoe Kazan
Theatre Release
March 03, 2011 by Anchor Bay Films
Browse All Movie Reviews By: