The star pairing of “Happy Hours” isn’t just its selling point, but its audience filter. If the words “Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson together again” make your heart go a little soft, then congratulations: This equally soft-hearted romantic comedy has been made directly for you. If, however, you’re unmoved by the prospect of a “Dawson’s Creek” reunion — or young enough not to know what that means — then feel free to walk on by: While perfectly innocuous, Holmes’ latest outing as a writer-director has nothing especially novel to offer viewers with no great attachment to its once-involved leads.
The good news is that, as former teenage lovers brought together by chance in middle age, Holmes and Jackson are as personable now as they were back then; on the other hand, Holmes’ script, a plot-light affair that rides heavily on the metatextual nature of its casting, doesn’t ask much more of them than that. Alternating tonally between tidy commercial romcom tropes and the shaggier walking-and-talking of Richard Linklater’s “Before” films, “Happy Hours” hasn’t the depth or breadth of dialogue required to sustain the latter approach — though it’s been mooted as the first in a trilogy revolving around these characters, we’re not left eager to learn that much more about them.
Still, while Holmes’ three previous features — two of which, like this one, premiered at Tribeca — had to settle for online releases, the appeal of the leads here (both on paper and, in turns out, in practice) may be enough to score “Happy Hours” some theatrical exposure. Supporting roles for Constance Wu and Mary-Louise Parker (adding a bit of welcome salt to the sweetness whenever she turns up as a free-living, free-loving elder) round out the film’s mainstream-indie credentials, though any other characters here exist only to prop up our reacquainted lovers.
Liz (Holmes) is a professional photographer and newly minted divorcée, introduced clearing her Manhattan apartment of her ex-husband’s debris. The divorce coincides with a new, less compromising approach to her work life too, as she prioritizes passion projects over paychecks: “I only want to take photos of real people,” she says, swearing off celebrity portrait commissions. Until, at least, one such commission is too intriguing to pass up: celebrated travel writer Andrew McCloud (Jackson), who just happens to be the first man she ever loved, some 30-odd years ago. Recurring flashbacks outline a blissed-out young romance (with Jack Martin and Johnna Dias-Watson as the stars’ youthful counterparts), soundtracked not by Nineties classics but the new-wave pulse of Blondie, the shared favorite band of these two old souls. Decades later — with an original song score by Norah Jones now providing the mellower midlife mood music — both are still unsure what went wrong between them.
If it doesn’t ring entirely true that two attractive, successful New Yorkers with everything going for them are still hung up on a decades-old crush, no matter: “Happy Hours” is a film with a steadfast belief in steadfast soulmates. Liz may put up a passive-aggressive front when she meets Andrew for a brisk photo shoot, but it takes only a few minutes of screen time for that old feeling to reemerge. A calamitous group date with their various ragtag pals — including Joe Tippett and Deaf actor John McGinty as Andrew’s straight-shooting BFFs, whose ASL conversations are pleasingly portrayed without additional narrative context — doesn’t throw the pair off their plainly predestined course, and nor do a few contrived narrative roadblocks thrown into the second half. True love will not be broken, and neither will entrenched romantic comedy law.
“Happy Hours” opens on the famous Alan Watts quote: “You cannot compare this present experience with a past experience. You can only compare it with a memory of the past, which is a part of the present experience.” At its most ambitious, Holmes’ script applies that idea to a relationship unfolding in two timeframes, though its observations aren’t especially substantial: Life happens, time is long but also short, and people change except when they don’t. Holmes and Jackson, happily, have enough natural chemistry to keep this uncomplicated construction afloat: If neither Liz nor Andrew is a fully dimensional character, they’re filled out by the personalities and backstories of the actors playing them.
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