SXSW Review: THE HAPPY POET

THE HAPPY PORT is an indie comedy written and directed by Paul Gordon, who also stars in the film as the title character. OK, actually… the title character is called Bill, but he’s affectionately refered to as The Happy Poet in relation to his small upstart business that he reluctantly dubs The Happy Poet.

Bill is an aspiring, yet to succeed poet of questionable talent. After leaving his job for reasons of personal dissatisfaction, Bill ventures out to start his own business. Bill believes he has the corner on the market for healthy food stands in the city park. Surrounded by food stands selling traditional hot dogs full of nitrates, Bill wants to offer people a healthier alternative with his organic, mostly vegetarian food stand.

After enduring an onslaught of rejection and negative feedback on the idea, including an otherwise directly insulting and unprofessional mercy offer from a banker to his request for a business loan, Bill finally barely scraped together enough money to makea down payment on a hot dog cart. He throws together some of his own favorite healthy foods to sell and goes out into the park to start his business.

Needless to say, business is slow at first, but Bill’s idea begins to pick up with the help of a quirky unnamed character (Chris Doubek) that helps spread the word after tasting Bill’s hummus pita. Shortly after, Donnie enters the story and offers his assistance by making deliveries and spreading the word.

As soon as Bill’s business seems to be taking off, he realizes he’s run out of cash and struggles with having to fold the business and his dream. He’s perplexed. He even toys with the idea of switching to the dark side and simply selling hot dogs like the other carts, but does a little investigating on his own and finds out he’s been taken advantage of by someone he hadn’t expected.

Essentially, Bill is the typical example of someone with a passion for something and thinks he can easily turn that passion into a thriving business. Unfortunately, like so many in real life, Bill has absolutely no business experience or realistic sense of how to properly market his product or protect his interests. Despite Bill’s awkward personality, people tend to like him and give him the benefit of the doubt. This includes an attractive young business woman who finds herself strangely attracted to Bill after trying his food, but Bill is about as successful with women as he is with running a business.

THE HAPPY POET isn’t a terrible movie. In fact, the story itself is rather good and carries a nice message to the audience in an enjoyable comedic vehicle. The general idea behind the film is that of someone pursuing their dreams with confidence, regardless of what others say or believe. Essentially, its a story of overcoming the odds.

The audience, myself included, derived many moment sof laughter from THE HAPPY POET. The jokes are mostly solid and fresh, but the key element that holds the film back is not Paul Gordon’s writing or directing… its his acting. Bill is so monotone and emotionless, he’s like a robot. In fact, one could make a comparison to Marv from HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, however Marv’s apathy and depression is even a bit too well defined for Bill. He’s just simply a character that the audience is unable to empathize with and care about, regardless of how nice he seems.

Preferably, Bill needed a bit more range in his performance. Whether or not Paul Gordon portrayed the character isn’t truly the issue on hand, however it probably wouldn’t have hurt to cast someone else to star while Gordon focused on making the film. THE HAPPY POET looks good for an indie film, shot fairly straight-forward, but having used the new RED camera technology means the film looks amazing.

Overall, THE HAPPY POET is worthy of attention as an indie film, but suffers unnecessarily from a main character without any real depth of texture. The idea behind the film is good and the execution is comically commendable, but enjoying the film does take a bit of extra work as Bill the boring poet takes up much of the screen time.

Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars