Happiness

Happiness follows three sisters and the people around them as they look for connection in a New Jersey suburb. Joy, the youngest, drifts between disappointing men and restless attempts to find a purpose. Helen is a successful writer who can attract almost any man but remains uneasy and detached. Trish believes she has a stable marriage, while her husband's private life hides urges she knows nothing about. Their parents are also reconsidering a marriage that has lasted decades. Around these characters move neighbours and strangers whose loneliness pushes them toward behaviour that others would find disturbing.

Todd Solondz wrote and directed the film, his second feature after Welcome to the Dollhouse and the one that preceded Storytelling, Wiener-Dog and his segment for Venice 70: Future Reloaded. Jane Adams plays Joy, Lara Flynn Boyle is Helen, Cynthia Stevenson is Trish and Dylan Baker is her husband Bill, with Philip Seymour Hoffman as the neighbour Allen and Louise Lasser as the sisters' mother. The film runs 140 minutes.

The production had a modest budget of about 3 million dollars and took roughly the same amount at the worldwide box office. Audience response on TMDB is a 7.4 rating from just under a thousand votes, while critics rated it 7.9 from fifty-one reviews.