# Happy, Texas (1999)

### reviewed by
Christian Pyle

    Happy, Texas (1999)
    Reviewed by Christian Pyle
    Directed by Mark Illsley
    Written by Ed Stone, Mark Illsley, and Phil Reeves
    Starring Jeremy Northam, Steve Zahn, Ally Walker, Illeana Douglas, and William
    H. Macy
    Grade:  C

Small-time crooks Harry Sawyer (Jeremy Northam) and Wayne Wayne Wayne Jr. (Steve Zahn) bust out of jail and steal an RV. The RV, it turns out belongs to David and Steven, a gay couple who go from town to town organizing beauty pageants. Harry and Wayne find themselves escorted to David and Steven's next destination -- Happy, Texas -- where Harry and Wayne have to take over the task of organizing a pageant for little girls. Wayne gets the job of teaching the girls to sing and dance, while Harry romances the owner of the local bank, Jo McLintock (Ally Walker of TV's "Profiler"), with the goal of ripping off the bank. At the same time, thanks to his homosexual cover story, Harry is the subject of unwanted advances from the local sheriff, Chappy Dent (William H. Macy). Wayne has a romance of his own with the kids' teacher (Illeana Douglas). Meanwhile, the law (Ron Perlman) and an enemy from prison (M.C. Gainey) are gaining on the boys.

Despite this movie's quirky indie vibe, at heart it's painfully mainstream. Its plot is derived from the same formula as "Houseguest," "Sister Act," and "Blue Steak": the hero has to pretend to be someone he's not in order to hide out, and in the process he changes his life and the lives of those around him. That plot is tame and predictable, I hoped that Harry and Wayne would actually rob the bank and skip town, leaving devastation in their wake. Instead, everything goes pretty much as you'd expect.

The most redeeming feature of "Happy" is the performance of Macy. His character is a challenge: a tough Texas lawman who's also a closeted homosexual. A lesser actor would have reduced Chappy to a cartoon of masculinity, but Macy makes Chappy a fully-rounded, believable, and sympathetic character. When Chappy's heart is inevitably broken, the scene is devastating. Macy's work also keeps "Happy" from being just a homophobic gag, an updated version of the men-in-dresses motif of "Some Like It Hot."

Sporting a thick drawl, Zahn wrings all the humor he can out of the script as his character becomes increasingly obsessed with teaching his young charges to strut their stuff. Northam is a fine actor -- he outacted the overrated Rupert Everett in "An Ideal Husband" -- but "Happy" gives him nothing to work with. Likewise, Ally Walker seems to have potential, but Jo is just another "modern woman making it on her own in a provincial small town." Ho hum.

Bottom line: the gay topic may seem avant garde, but "Happy, Texas" is pure Disneyland.

    © 2000 Christian L. Pyle

Read my reviews and others at the Mad Review: http://www.madreview.com/main.html

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews