Le Bonheur pour les débutants

I love Luke Grimes and watched this for him, and he is tender and sweet and lovable, but his co-lead is badly miscast with Kemper. She's great in other things, but she is not a believable love interest for Grimes and her character is irksome, at best, almost throughout, with only momentary glimpses of redemption. The screenplay, adapted from a book, fails to portray her character growth alongside him, fails to show enough of their shared moments prior to THE HIKE, and indeed seems to leave out a lot of the most inspirational stuff from the book itself. If this screenwriter had some childish concept that she was a better writer than the book author, let us disabuse her of that silly notion. I liked the supporting cast, but they weren't fleshed out enough. At the end of the day, it was pretty to watch but Kemper was mostly very grating, the romance was unbelievable, and there wasn't enough material regarding how to be happy for this to truly feel like a feel-good flick. Only one character who brought up 3 things we're grateful for even seemed like a vague reference to the title, the book, and presumably the entire point. It seems a shame, bc the setting was so lovely and you had Grimes ON SET as well. They should have just shot him walking around on those trails sharing his personal thoughts...that would have earned a higher rating.

I cannot wait to read this book. At the 1.33 mark I went to Libby and tagged it, there was already a group of people that had a hold on it. I keep wondering how it is going to end.

I don't know what drew us to watch it, but what a great decision. My wife would say it was Luke Grimes, yea I get it. What I really liked about this movie, and can't wait to explore it in the book was that in the beginning everyone had their flaws and it looked as though there was going to be way too much stress. All of a sudden I realized how harmoniously they were with each other. Really made me smile.

The locale that this was shot was beautiful. The scenes of the group hiking in the meadows and on tree lines was very happy as they hiked in a single file line.

I'm glad we found this as it was released only 2 days prior to us seeing it.

I can now read the reviews and see what other views of this are. I hate reading reviews prior to seeing a movie. If you are one of those who read the reviews prior to watching a movie and you are reading this...by all means you need to watch this, hopefully you will not be disappointed.

I thought this was a really cute movie! I had no idea that it was a book so I really comment on that.

It didn't have to have complex characters or or political opinions or obvious social issues being pushed. Anything that was included in this movie seamlessly moulded with the characters which made it extremely easy to watch.

Just a lovely simple story to relax to...

Overall I think I'd there were more of these being made tv would be less stressful to watch lol I'm all for movies with a message but not ALLLLL the time it's exhausting and I feel like just scrolling the menu increases my anxiety levels.

Making an interesting rom-com is hard, simply because of how familiar the subject is. Happiness for Beginners doesn't really break new ground, but it's a lighthearted watch that manages to keep you interested. The characters are grounded and realistic, each with their own quirks. The leads keep you absorbed in the story. The side-characters bring their own unique perspectives and motivations. The romance grows slowly and organically, and never feels forced into the narrative. The visuals of the Appalachian trail are beautiful. All of this is done with a light touch that makes the movie easy to watch, and the overall result is something sweet that I think I'll be coming back to.

Only 2 minutes into this movie I immediately recognized the plot and realized I have read this book; didn't realize based on the title alone, but that's how strong the book plot hit me back when I read it over 3 years ago... According to my book review, this is one of the best books I've read and I even wanted to read it again someday. So it being made into a movie is a dream come true, and it did live up to my expectations but still think people should read the book! Always. The movie was lovely, the book was way more of a slow burn if you like that type of thing. Lastly, they should have kept Beckett's original monologue, it was so good I wrote it out at the time *ahem*: "I'm sorry human beings are such a blight. I'm sorry we litter your earth and choke the fish in your oceans. We have been given incomprehensible beauty on this earth, but we don't see it. We walk around angry and blind and ungrateful. I wish we were better, our dumb human race, but I don't have much hope that we ever will be. The best I can do today is say: Thank you for this world of miracles. We will try to be more grateful. And less ridiculous."