New on DVD: 'Happy-Go-Lucky' and 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas'

'Happy-Go-Lucky'

Rated: R

Length: 119 minutes

Rating: 4 out of 5

The ever-cheerful, those who constantly tell jokes (and laugh at them), are rarely portrayed in film other than as incidental characters. Perhaps that's because in the real world, the relentlessly upbeat are often regarded as desperate for approval and disconnected from reality.

But in writer/director Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky," the irrepressible Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is far stronger than her sometimes-irritating frivolity would indicate.

Supported by a whimsical score, the relatively unknown Hawkins is riveting as Poppy, a 30-year-old single schoolteacher in working-class London. She wears gaudy clothes, loves jumping on a trampoline and never stops with the goofy quips. Yet she proves to be a calming force for those around her, including a cyncial flatmate, a school bully and bickering sisters.

"Happy-Go-Lucky" is sometimes disquieting, especially during Poppy's alarming encounters with a brutish driving instructor (Eddie Marsan), during which the heroine can't jest her way around his vitriol and the tension mounts from her seeming obliviousness to his smoldering anger.

Although the film feels like a longish two hours because of Leigh's protracted scenes, the director makes his case with an emotional payoff. The happy-go-lucky might not be as delusional as we think they are, and the fact they chose to be uplifting makes them magnetic.

'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas'

Rated: PG-13

Length: 94 minutes

Rating: 4 out of 5

There's a near-inevitable formula to WWII movies about Germans, and initially at least, director Mark Herman can't escape it with "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas." Stylish and somber though it is, for about an hour the film has a familiar feel as various Germans participate in, ignore or simply don't know (by either choice or naivete) about the Nazi atrocities.

This particular tale, adapted by Herman from a novel by John Boyne, involves a concentration-camp commandant (David Thewlis), his reluctantly acquiescent wife (Vera Farmiga), their eagerly accepting 12-year-old daughter (Amber Beattie) and 8-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield), their kind and unknowing son. "The Boy" begins taking on unusual dimensions for the genre when Bruno strikes up an improbable, secret friendship with one of the concentration-camp prisoners, Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), also 8. Butterfield and Scanlon magically convey their connection, which is pivotal to the film, by mostly nonverbal means.

"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" ultimately defines itself with a surprising shift followed by a swift and memorable conclusion that demands its audience question issues of justice and equality.

Although WWII movies have largely become cliche, the unique twist in "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" will prove to be a gut-check not soon forgotten.

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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