Happy Tears

Happy Tears follows two sisters, Jayne and Laura, who come back to their family home to deal with their ageing father, Joe. Joe is in his seventies and has a form of dementia that is getting worse, and he can no longer manage on his own. The sisters disagree about what should happen to him: Laura, a busy environmental scientist with two young children, believes he needs professional care, while Jayne, who has just had a baby and is preoccupied with her own marriage, is reluctant to accept the situation. Joe himself wants to stay in his house. The women are also suspicious of Shelly, the woman looking after him. Old tensions between the sisters resurface as they try to settle their father's future.

Mitchell Lichtenstein wrote and directed the film, his second feature after Teeth, and Joyce Pierpoline produced it. Parker Posey plays Jane, Demi Moore plays Laura, Ellen Barkin plays Shelly, and Rip Torn plays Joe, with Christian Camargo and Billy Magnussen in supporting roles. The film was released in October 2009 and runs 96 minutes.

Reception was modest: on IMDb it holds a rating of 5.2 from around 1,700 votes, and on TMDB it sits at 5 out of 10 from a small number of votes. A critics' rating of 4.2 from 34 reviews places it below even the mixed audience scores.