Hector and the Search for Happiness

Hector is a London psychiatrist who becomes disillusioned with his work when he realizes his patients are not getting any happier despite his efforts. Feeling like a fraud in his own comfortable life, he leaves his practice and his girlfriend Clara behind and sets off around the world to find out what happiness really is and whether it exists for him. His journey takes him to a series of unfamiliar places and encounters that test his assumptions about the subject he has spent his career treating.

Peter Chelsom directed the film, his seventh feature, following Hear My Song, Funny Bones, The Mighty, Serendipity, Shall We Dance? and Hannah Montana: The Movie. He wrote the screenplay with Maria von Heland and Tinker Lindsay, adapting François Lelord's novel. Simon Pegg plays Hector, with Rosamund Pike as Clara and supporting turns from Toni Collette, Stellan Skarsgård, Christopher Plummer and Jean Reno. The production was an international one, involving companies and locations across Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, the United States and South Africa.

The film was released in August 2014 and runs 114 minutes. Its worldwide box office came to about 1 million USD, a modest return for a production of this scale. Audiences have been kinder to it than critics: on IMDb it holds 6.9/10 from 53,000 votes and on TMDB 6.7/10 from 989 votes, while the critics' rating stands at 4.8/10 from 86 reviews.