Todd Solandz's films are generally hit-or-miss affairs, and the line between hitting or missing is generally quite fine. Always emotionally intense, and character-based, they can be taxing, even dull or pretentious, but hold the promise of being mind-blowingly profound. Solandz's magnum opus was Happiness, in 1998. An incredibly profound movie, it hit the spot. Palindromes, in 2004, missed the spot, seeming random and pretentious. Life in Wartime has the potential to be like Happiness, but is always teetering on the edge of being nothing-dressed-up-as-something, like Palindromes. In the end it is an interesting journey, but it never clicks up that notch necessary to make it profound. In the end you feel that the journey was a waste of time.

I am not too happy about Writer-Director Todd Solondz' sequel to his 1998 critically acclaimed 1998 indie film "Happiness". "Life During Wartime" should have been titled "Life During Boretime" because its mind-numbing melancholy tone is a bunch of borea borea! Sure "Happiness" was also melancholy, but it was thought-provoking and compelling; no matter how dreary and repugnant the characters were. "Life During Wartime" plays around with the same characters as the original- sisters Joy, Trish, Helen; pedophile Bill Maplewood straight out of jail; son Billy now in college; plus some new characters including Timmy who is Billy's younger brother and also son of Father Bill. The major shift here is that all these characters are portrayed by other actors; no Phillip Seymour Hoffman, or Cynthia Stevenson, or even Dylan Baker, which all deserved Oscar nominations for their "Happiness" performances. In "Life During Wartime"- Joy is still miserable, Trish is still hypocritical, and Helen is still self-centered. Maplewood is like a dead man walking throughout most of the film, and not like a rehabilitated pedophile striving to change his past ways. The actors do their best, but it was really a battle for them to invoke any authenticity to their characters in their wartime duty because of Solondz' sloppy writing and direction. I am a big fan of Solondz' "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Happiness", and included those movies as two of my favorites of the 1990's. But since the millennium, Solondz' archetype style of developing gloomy and despicable characters has run it course; and too many disturbed and sad characters in recent past Solondz' film creations have become a nuisance instead of a revelation. In other words, his Toddatales have become continuous dead-end narratives, instead of insightful character studies. Now some of the performances in "Life During Wartime" were noteworthy including Allison Janney as Trish, Ally Sheedy as Helen, and Paul Reubens as Joy dumpee- Andy. Yes, there is a Pee-Wee sighting in "Life During Wartime" and it's a good one. Reubens' supporting performance as Andy might just very well be the life of "Life During Wartime". OK, I know I need to get a life but I also know that you don't need to get a "Life During Wartime". **Needs Improvement

First off, while I'm not a fan of everything Solondz has done, I consider Happiness one of my all-time favorite films. Thus, I was really looking forward to Life During Wartime, but after the film was over, I ended up wishing that Solondz had just left Happiness alone. It feels like a direct-to-video exploitation release, or maybe even an especially polished but ultimately off-model fanfic selection in an alternate universe where Happiness somehow holds the stature of Harry Potter.I am OK with the decision (probably forced, given the current stature of folks like Philip Seymour Hoffman) to recast everyone involved. But given that this is effectively billed as a spiritual sequel, it's hard to get past some of the resulting serious discrepancies in performance and character. Ally Sheedy, Allison Janney, Claran Hines and Michael K. Williams all turn in otherwise-good performances that unfortunately have very little in common with their characters' original personalities, making believable continuation impossible. Dylan Snyder's Timmy represents a new character that effectively replaces the role of Billy in Happiness, but he's nowhere near as believable or likable as that character was.Shirley Henderson, in particular, totally misses the tone and purpose of Jane Adams in the role of Joy, who was perhaps the only "sympathetic" character in the original (other than Billy). We no longer experience Joy as a sweet, lovable granola-crunchy dreamer and world-worn lifelong loser. Instead, Henderson comes off as some kind of generally-emotionless whispering wee faerie with none of Adams' warmth or ability to generate pathos. I do, however, greatly enjoy Paul Reubens' spot-on performance in the place of Jon Lovitz's original Andy-- although Andy's role in this movie is now inexplicably central, given how little he really mattered to Joy past the first half-hour in Happiness.It's hard for a Happiness fan to get past the labored and extremely drawn-out exposition that results from all these character discrepancies. You get the feeling that Solondz is having to take unusual pains to catch us up on the story, and to get us to buy New Actor Y in the role of Old Actor X. The movie starts to finally lift up out of these dregs in the last half hour or so, just in time to make us wonder what the point was, and/or why he didn't just create an entirely new universe with his entirely new cast to save himself (and us) all the trouble. I can't imagine a viewer who has never seen Happiness would find its first two-thirds any more satisfying for all the effort.Most troublingly for those who can't help but compare (and appropriately so, given the "spiritual sequel" billing), Happiness is a darkly hilarious movie, with most of the humor coming from the unspoken sadness and/or maliciousness of its desperate characters' interactions. Life During Wartime simply isn't funny, and isn't similarly "subtle." It's melodramatic, almost soap-opera-like in tone, with few of the wonderfully dissonant, squirm-in-your-chair moments that made Solondz' '90s works so entertaining (and so fun to show to the uninitiated). It often feels like we're being hit over the head with the "purpose" of each character in Wartime, rather than letting their actions / words simply speak for themselves as it was in Happiness.This might have been a somewhat OK movie if it had been a fresh start with no baggage from Solondz' masterwork. Obviously, it's hard for any director / producer / screenwriter to escape from their widely-beloved past works if they choose to do something different. But in this case, Solondz actually *chose* to bring that baggage along, and dares fans of the original to make comparisons (as is immediately evident from even the opening scene and credits to anyone who remembers Happiness). I'm not sure if this was a cynical effort on the part of Solondz-- who has had documented troubles getting funding for his 00s movies-- to cash in on the relatively small Happiness fanbase, giving them a movie that they "have to see," even though these two films ultimately have very little in common.Solondz' more recent work in general has been disappointing to me, but his misguided effort to "continue" Happiness has been by far the biggest and most bitter disappointment yet, failing to add anything new, interesting or even tone-appropriate to the universe he wants us to revisit. I desperately hope he's done making "spiritual sequels" now, and will have something really new to say (hopefully as funny as his old stuff) when his next project rolls around.

Welcome to another indie dramedy of quirky characters, this time courtesy of quirky indie director, Todd Solondz. Part black comedy, part drama with a message, I think Solondz wants it both ways. I saw the film at the IFC cinema in NYC and the two friends I was with found the blend of comedy and tragedy to be highly effective. Except for a few bits here and there and decent acting, I couldn't agree with my friends at all.Life During Wartime begins with an intense conversation at a restaurant between Joy (Shirley Henderson) and her husband Alan (Michael Kenneth Williams). Joy, an underweight vegetarian who enjoys playing folk songs on her guitar, works with ex-cons and Alan is apparently a reformed crack addict. Joy is suddenly disappointed when a waitress recognizes Alan, who is still making obscene phone calls, and curses him out. It's supposed to be amusing as Alan blubbers inside the restaurant about how hard he's been trying to reform himself. Joy has had enough, so she heads to Florida to visit her sister, Trish (Allison Janney). Joy is plagued by visions of her first boyfriend Andy (Paul Reubens aka Pee Wee Herman) who committed suicide. Another unfunny bit is Joy castigating the phantom Andy about trying to kill himself with a paper bag, as he might not actually die and end up as a 'vegetable'. The same discussion happens later on between husband Alan, who also eventually kills himself, and ends up as Phantom #2 in Joy's disturbed mind.Trish, another dysfunctional family member, is divorced from Bill who is now just getting out of prison for molesting young boys. There's more unfunny black comedy when Trish confides in her 12 year old son, Timmy (about to be Bar Mitzvahed) about how wet she gets thinking about her new boyfriend Harvey (Michel Lerner). Solondz juxtaposes the kooky but attractive Trish with the overweight Harvey and clearly is mocking his characters as we see Trish (towering over Harvey), passionately kissing him in a parking garage. Later, there's a joke about how Harvey voted for Bush and McCain but only because they supported Israel (Harvey makes it clear that he will eventually return to Israel when he's about to die).Things get more serious when Timmy returns home after a kid at school mocks him about his pedophile father (information about the father is readily available over the internet). Trish comforts Timmy as he expresses his fears about being victimized by pedophiles. Unfortunately, Solodnz seems to enjoy putting in suggestions of anal penetration into the mouth of Timmy which doesn't ring true for a 12 year old. Joy decides to visit the third sister, Helen, a former poet turned screenwriter in California. Helen is neurotic as the rest of her sisters and can't seem to take the pressure of success. She has a melt down in front of Joy complaining about the difficulties of being Keanu Reeves' girlfriend and being the victim of a stalker. Joy eventually calls husband Alan who has already killed himself with a gun in their apartment. We don't actually see the return to New York but we know she's found Alan's body after she has visions once again of him, after returning to Florida.There are two final scenes leading to the film's climax. First Bill returns to the family home where he locates older son's Billy's address at college. Bill visits the older son at his dorm room where he admits that despite therapy in prison, his demons have not gone away and he's still a pedophile. When Bill asks his son what's his major in school, Billy replies 'anthropology'. It seems he's studying (of all things) the homosexual orientation of bonobo monkeys (Billy finds that incest between the monkeys is a natural thing!). Maybe I'm reading too much into this scene but perhaps Billy has a thing for his father (he does make it clear that he wants his father to be back in the family's lives but the father, a broken man, walks out forever). Why does Solondz keep undercutting our sympathies for the characters? The bit about the father's love for gum drops, just seems nonsensical. Finally, there's Timmy's adult-like conversation with Harvey where his mother's suitor tries to comfort the boy over his fear of pedophilia. Again, the way in which Timmy's verbalizes his fears, doesn't seem like it could come from the mouth of a 12 year old. Timmy mistakes Harvey's comforting moves as an advance by someone about to molest him. As a result, Trish believes Harvey to be an actual pedophile and sends him home packing. Later, Timmy apologizes to Harvey's son Mark who informs him that his father is moving to Israel (presumably to die).Life During Wartime features one laugh-out-loud character and that's Harvey's son, the nerdy computer specialist who believes China will take over the world. All the actors acquit themselves well here, especially Dylan Riley Snyder as Timmy, who despite the inappropriate language, manages to effect an aura of maturity, well beyond his chronological age. Solodnz can't make up his mind whether he sympathizes with his characters or has contempt for them. Somehow all the quirkiness didn't endear me to any of them. In the end, Life During Wartime, with its theme of forgiveness, falls short of being effective drama, precisely because its characters are so one-dimensional. And as a comedy, much of the humor is designed to titillate, but unfortunately produces few laughs.