Happy-Go-Lucky (DVD)

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Sally Hawkins ("Vera Drake," "Layer Cake") is positively charming as a mod-throwback English schoolteacher whose Mary Sunshine personality helps her connect with her young students but befuddles many of the adults with whom she tries to interact. Just watching Hawkins' facial expressions and reaction shots is enough to make you smile, so it's easy to see why she won a Golden Globe for her performance. Sometimes that, combined with her delivery, makes you think of Mike Myers' Austin Powers character when people aren't responding the way that he thought they might. It's that much of a snorts-and-giggles involuntary reaction to see her go through her Pollyanna routine.

There's really not much in the way of plot, though. It's an ultra-thin slice-of-life film that begins with a cheery sequence involving Poppy (Hawkins) on her bicycle, carefree as can be and just flat-out enjoying life. Even when she returns from looking inside a store (where her attempts to coax a smile or some human interaction from a surly clerk fall flat) to find her only means of transportation stolen, she still smiles. So should we all, is the underlying moral here. She may not be able to win over people other than her roommate Zoe (Alexis Zegerman), sister Suzy (Kate O'Flynn), or a school psychiatrist (Samuel Roukin) who helps her with a disturbed pupil and likes her enough to ask her out. But it's that gap between the cynics, grumps, dour people and Poppy that creates a space for the audience to appreciate just how endearingly quirky her character is.

This is a comedy of character, which is to say that every scene is geared toward highlighting Poppy's effervescent personality. We watch her dancing at a club with sister and friends, getting absolutely "pissed," and then laughing and talking girl-talk afterwards at the apartment. We watch her testing out a craft project with roommate and fellow elementary schoolteacher Zoe and loving it all just a bit more than her friend. We watch her join another at flamenco lessons, and go from those Mike Myers' sly ridicule-mode looks to really getting into it. We watch her handle a bully with more understanding than a typical teacher and enthrall the school psychiatrist, Tim, as they date. But mostly we watch her sign on to take driving lessons from a man who will prove to be her biggest challenge: an angry man named Scott (played with all the delicious zeal of a Disney villain by Eddie Marsan).

It's those sessions in the car between Scott and Poppy that move the plot forward toward the film's relatively mild climax. The contrast between the unhappy driving instructor and his ebullient pupil and the ways in which she drives him crazy also take us through the widest range of emotions that this film evokes and explores. The two of them couldn't be more opposite in their personalities and attitudes. One is a peppy and perky schoolteacher, and the other a dropout who had a miserable experience in the educational system and now says things like "Schools produce left-brain prisons." At times, Poppy doesn't know quite what to say, and so she resorts to her default: making a joke or trying to coax a smile. What else is there to do?, she wonders aloud. CONCENTRATE! Scott shouts. Stop wearing those bloody boots. They're not proper driving attire, Scott chides. ENRAHAH! he shouts, which is his way of reminding her to look at her left mirror, rear-view mirror, and right mirror before doing anything. And when he says it and explains the method to his madness, you realize that he's like a religious zealot who is trying to convert her every bit as much as she is trying to get to him. It becomes a test of wills, a battle of philosophies that lurks beneath the surface of her jokes and his annoyances and rants.