Life During Wartime

2009 sequel

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Follows the lives of the three sisters from the uplifting Solondz movie Happiness.

If I had known this was a sequel to Happiness, I might have checked it out earlier. It seems like an odd choice to have a sequel without any of the same actors and actresses. And you might assume that replacing Jon Lovitz with anybody at all would automatically sink a sequel, but that character, who is dead anyway, is replaced with Paul Reubens.

There's one great scene with Shirley Henderson (that's Moaning Myrtle), playing the sister who was originally played by the adorable Jane Adams, walking nocturnally in a nightgown while this Devendra Banhart song plays. I kind of wish I had just watched that scene, like a cool little music video, and the scene where the kid asks about baby carrots feeling pain.

The rest of this just didn't work. Solondz doesn't add any depth to these characters introduced in Happiness, the movie's dark humor doesn't work nearly as well, and it sort of hits all the same points thematically although not as effectively.