“All happy families are alike,” reads the immortal first line of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”; “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And while jaded viewers may think that all indie dramas about dysfunctional families in the vein of “Little Miss Sunshine” or “The Squid and the Whale” are similar, writer-director Haroula Rose’s “All Happy Families” suggests that the genre a more grounded direction. Whether that is ultimately a better direction remains to be seen.
The center of this particular family is Graham (Josh Radnor), an aspiring screenwriter/actor whose older brother Will (Rob Huebel) stars in a hugely popular (and apparently terrible) TV series. While Will surprises Graham by flying from Los Angeles to Chicago for an unannounced visit to the family home they bought together, their mother Sue (Becky Ann Baker) tries to figure out how to respond when her former boss touches her inappropriately on her retirement party. , and their father Roy (John Ashton) may or may not be gambling again.
If that sounds like a lot, this is just the tip of the iceberg: Graham has recently reconnected with a college friend named Dana (Chandra Russell), who is about to become his new tenant, Will’s teenage daughter (Ivy O’Brien) just came out as trans, and Will himself is coy about the reason for his surprise homecoming. The Landrys are truly unhappy in their own way.
Radnor — a multi-hyphenate who wrote, directed and starred in two Sundance hits while starring in the long-running “How I Met Your Mother” — seems completely at ease playing the weary, increasingly world-weary Graham. It’s as if he can’t believe that despite not exactly having his affairs in order, he has somehow become the most well-adjusted member of his family. The script from Rose and co-writer Coburn Goss is at its best when it focuses on the rekindled spark between Graham and Dana, a chef who, unlike her future landlord, is not used to sabotaging herself when she’s on the edge of the abyss. that she has something nice in her life. “All Happy Families” sometimes feels like multiple movies at once, with the overlapping subplots vying for dominance like attention-starved siblings, with the rom-com segments ultimately emerging as the golden child.
But there is so much more going on. “I can’t believe this is my family,” says Sue, a matriarch who loses control, during a particularly low point between the brothers. It’s perhaps the film’s most recognizable line, one that many of us have thought at some point, even if we’ve never said it out loud. “All Happy Families” is not intended for grandiloquence or overwrought monologues, but for small, lived-in moments that almost make the film more than the sum of its deliberately disjointed parts.
This would be a lot for a family of four to manage. It’s also a lot for any filmmaker, especially one making a 90-minute slice of life. It’s no surprise that “All Happy Families” ultimately feels incomplete, as if we were watching the pilot for a miniseries instead of a standalone feature film. There’s something to be said for leaving audiences wanting more, but there’s even more to be said for telling a story that seems finished by the time the credits roll. Rose and Goss cover a lot of heavy topics – most of the subplots could drive entire stories on their own – but don’t have time to do much more than touch on most of them.
