Happy-Go-Lucky represents yet another installment in Mike Leigh's ongoing canon of odes to working-class Britons leading quiet lives of desperation. The main character, Poppy (the extraordinary Sally Hawkins), is a charming and charismatic 30-year-old schoolteacher who operates according to a single principle: confront the ills of the world with bubbly exuberance and a series of lighthearted jests. The narrative arc brings Poppy to a moment of life-changing disillusionment -- not the shattering disillusionment that will send the young woman tumbling down into a mire of cynical pessimism, but the sort that will impart her with a tad more wisdom than she initial...
Released:
2008
Rated:
R
Length:
118 mins