'Happiness for Beginners' (2023) Movie on Netflix. Movie Review

‘Happiness for Beginners‘ is a romantic movie written and directed by Vicky Wight and starring Ellie Kemper and Luke Grimes. It is based on the novel by Katherine Center.

“Happiness for Beginners” is one of those movies that are impossible to distinguish, inconsequentially passing through our lives with the same ease with which they manage to fill a couple of hours of our time.

An argument crafted to please everyone at a camp where it seems like everyone is competing to make the easiest joke. A movie to either surpass middle age (or remind us of it, depending on how you look at it).

Happiness for Beginners is a film adaptation of the 2015 novel of the same name by Katherine Center. The film follows Helen Carpenter (Ellie Kemper), a 32-year-old schoolteacher who is struggling to find her way after her divorce. When her brother convinces her to sign up for a wilderness survival course, Helen is initially reluctant. However, she soon finds that the course is a challenge that she is not only capable of meeting, but that it is also helping her to find herself again.

Along the way, Helen meets a group of other misfits who are also on the course, including Josh (Luke Grimes), a handsome stranger who is also struggling to find his way in life. As Helen and Josh get to know each other, they begin to fall in love. However, their relationship is complicated by the fact that Helen is still not sure if she is ready to move on from her ex-husband.

Movie Review

Pleasant, inconsequential, and softly treads in its melody of “not harming anyone”. A movie that is as difficult to hate as it is to remember, effectively combining romantic comedy with comedy of maturity. A frivolous comedy with a touch of seriousness, and also a film that addresses “serious” topics with apparent frivolity.

“Happiness for Beginners” is a movie that seeks and achieves a certain inconsequential naturalness, a journey through nature in its external plot, but also internally in a proposition that ultimately fails to uncover anything new, nor does it intend to.