Happy Accidents- A review

It’s nice to see a romantic film and not be nauseated.

You may think that this is just a macho knee jerk response to movies involving emotions but romantic movies on average just make me want to throw up. The sheer dominant paradigm aspects of mating rituals make it predictable and clichéd. And it does not help the fact that your average Mega Studio produced rom-coms are usually written by hacks; the sort of people who think that “It was a dark and stormy night” is cutting edge in terms of opening lines.

So you could have knocked me down with a feather (danger! cliché!) when I came across Happy Accidents, a movie that takes all the hackneyed aspects of the rom-com genre and throws them out of the window. One must give credit to the writer for just being entirely original. I have never been more delighted by a romantic movie since Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind.

Written and directed by Brad Anderson, the movie stars Marisa Tomei and Vincent D’Onofrio. It was released at Sundance in January 2000 and since then had great critical success. One may argue that the sheer cerebral nature of the story may have been the biggest obstacle to any commercial success. In addition the movie has a very subtle feel good aspect that would have made any other script cringe worthy but makes itself at home in this one.

Ruby is a “fixer”, i.e. a walking talking magnet of all the losers and emotional vampires and fetishists. A long line of ex boyfriends has made her somewhat cynical of life and she is very much into therapy. Then she meets Sam, a mid western boy from Dubuque, Iowa who seems to be the most normal guy she has ever been with. They hit it off and Ruby decides that she may have been mistaken about love after all.

But from the beginning there are glitches. Sam seems normal enough but he takes an unusual interest in everything, as if he sees them for the first time. Fairly quickly into their relationship, Sam confesses to Ruby that he’s from the future, in particular, from 2470. He is from Dubuque, Iowa on the Atlantic coast- apparently an ice age had made the ocean move far into the heartland. His parents have been renegades, old fashioned people who do not conform to the technological society’s norms. After losing his family, Sam was on the verge of suicide when a picture of Ruby in an old curiosity shop made him think twice. He traveled back in time to find her.

So, a story of a pair of neurotic lovers with a bit of time traveling thrown in- is that enough to hold my attention? But what really carries the movie is not a gimmicky script- you cannot remember any zinger of a one liner. It is a story of love- pure and simple. Two lost souls find each other and hold on to each other for dear life as the world continues to bask in condescending indifference towards them.

There is an aspect of time flowing backwards from Sam’s perspective: he tends to see the coffee leaping back on the pot, the eggs becoming unbroken, etc. But is he lying? Is he just delusional and the fact that his sister’s death may have pushed him off the edge? Is he truly who he say he is?

Yes, these questions will bug you all throughout the movie. But what is more important is for you to ask: will they make it? These two seemingly oddballs have discovered what it truly means to be in love with each other and the madness of their relationship and the madness of the world around them and the madness of each other just feeds off on your emotional response to the story.

I like smart alecks and I like banter. But it was humbling for me to see that pure feeling, tenderness and love could also be heartwarming. I think everyone should go see this  movie- it is that good.