by Dane Youssef<br /><br />The writer/director of this one is Todd Solondz, so you all know what to expect. For those who saw his heavily acclaimed (by critics and audiences alike) "Welcome To The Dollhouse" a movie about the hell almighty on earth that is junior high school.<br /><br />I was not one of the film's many admirers. Yes, I felt like just about everybody else that the film did have some poignant truths, but... I pretty much already knew them all. It all felt kinda redundant. I was in high school at the time and every scene I was watching, I thought, "Yeah, no sh*t."<br /><br />I mean, I know it's supposed to be a satire, but I felt too much like I was watching what I already knew and thought and what has been said too many times before. Solondz was preaching to the reverend there.<br /><br />His next film, "Happiness" about three sisters and their lives... and how adulthood is even less as mentally unbalanced as junior high school. About three sisters and how their lives aren't as well-adjusted as they seem. The seemingly ideal perfect sister is dry, secretly dull and lives such a sterile life that when an obscene phone caller calls her... she starts stalking him.<br /><br />The best line in the movie "Happiness"... that almost encapsulates the entire film:<br /><br />"I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you." "But I'm not laughing."<br /><br />The film is about two different forms of storytelling: "Fiction" and "Non-Fiction."<br /><br />In the first story, "Fiction," Solondz shines an interpretive light a creative writing class.<br /><br />A woman with writing aspirations and her cerebral-palsy boyfriend with the same. Vi has broken up with her boyfriend after his obviously autobiographical story is panned horribly by the school teacher who scathes it. He especially takes some kind of pleasure in attacking the title: "The Rawness of Truth." <br /><br />Vi's boyfriend is furious with her for not giving it to him straight. Marcus' "Rawness" is about how Vi gave him confidence and made him feel... "completely cerebral."<br /><br />Most of the whole class warms up to it... except for the teacher's pet... and the writing teacher himself, a Pulitzer-winner author of a novel entitled, "A Sunday Lynching."<br /><br />Vi, stricken, gets hammered, lights up and... well... let me just put it this way... after having her last story ripped to shreds by the professor, her next story is certainly something of an improvement. And she's definitely evolving... because he's finally got something to say.<br /><br />The professor has a poetic line about the writing process that rings incredibly true: "Whenever you write... it all becomes fiction."<br /><br />"Non-Fiction" skewers reality and human experiences with life with a scalpel. Often at times, those documentarians seem to be roasting and attacking their subjects with great anger and fury... but are they just trying to get heat for their film... or is that how they really see it?<br /><br />Who knows? Many artists are former victims, grown children with bad experiences and hell-bent on vengeance. "Non-Fiction" revolves around the exploits of a documentation filmmaker and his desire to make a documentary about teenagers and what they're feeling now.<br /><br />Have things changed much? Drugs... suicidal feelings... self-loathing... loathing of the world around them... of the way society treats them, pressures them, conforms them and disposes of them... how do teenagers put up with it? What's ahead? Mark Webber is Scooby Livingston, a depressed, moody teenager who's completely lost and like many teenagers, his all-purpose requests to every questing is "I don't know," "I really don't care" and "Whatever." <br /><br />He always seems deep in thought and in need of answers. He has big goal aspirations... but no idea whatsoever as how to attain them. When asked how he plans to attain his dreams of stardom, he answers: "I don't know, see if I have any connections... whatever..." After a meet-strange with a documentian Toby, both seem to be exactly what they're looking for and maybe their seemingly unobtainable dreams might have a chance of coming true after all.<br /><br />The family is not enthusiastic about the whole thing... especially the father who doesn't want the family's dirty laundry to be aired out. But after some hard questions and earnest promises, he agrees.<br /><br />No family wants to be exploited... and this family certainly would provide more than enough of such material. I think the boy represents Solondz as a young teenager (Solondz himself is a vegetarian) and of course, Giamatti as Toby is Solondz as a filmmaker (Solondz dresses up Giamatti to look exactly like him). There's pressure all around from every angle and sadly, no way out in sight. College doesn't sound appealing to Scoob. Will there be a place for him. Since Scooby grew up to be Solondz himself, there must be hope. But I think Scooby represents all teenagers. He reflects our generation. God, how many teens are there out there EXACTLY like Scooby?<br /><br />Like all of his other efforts, this is about how ugliness and unsettling rage lives in middle class suburbia. You can't watch this movie, see/hear some of these people and not think of someone you know or have met or seen randomly on the street. Solondz is from Suburbia, New Jersey and is talking about what's going on there. I like how he talks about things that most people shy away from. He wants to criticize, satirize and get you to ask yourself... "How many people are really like this? And... is there hope for us? How many of these people exist... and more importantly, are they in our neighborhood? Not many... hopefully."<br /><br />Like all of Solondz films, people will either be mesmerized by it or despise it, but it's a movie that many should see. Perhaps a movie for cynical teenagers and aspiring storytellers. Just know what you're getting into. Like all of Solondz's pictures, this cuts deep... and leaves a mark.