"Happy-Go-Lucky": No plot? Don't worry — be happy

When's the last time you saw a movie about someone who was happy all the time? Mike Leigh's bubbly, primary-colored "Happy-Go-Lucky" is exactly that: an examination of a preternaturally cheerful soul. Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is so happy, she smiles when her bike gets stolen. ("Didn't even get a chance to say goodbye," she says, cheerfully resigned to the loss.) When she painfully throws out her back, she giggles. Her flatmate Zoe (Alexis Zegerman), a fellow schoolteacher, feels the need to warn her that she can't make everybody happy. "There's no harm in trying," smiles Poppy.

If you met a person such as Poppy in real life, you might be forgiven for wondering whether she's playing with a full deck. But Hawkins, in her third Leigh film (she had smaller roles in "All or Nothing" and "Vera Drake"), creates a character that's utterly charming. Clad in rainbow necklaces and moppet hair, she prances through the movie like a sunbeam in tap shoes.

In her series of encounters with a dour driving instructor (Eddie Marsan), she keeps tossing his gloom back at him. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," he warns her about her driving skills. "Sounds like fun!" is her reply. Though he becomes frustrated with her — "You celebrate chaos!" he yells, as if that's the worst thing a person could do — we never do; the endearing Poppy grows on us, and we become protective of her.

A great character, however, does not necessarily a great movie make. "Happy-Go-Lucky," enjoyable as it is, ultimately feels slight compared to many of Leigh's other movies. ("Topsy-Turvy," my own favorite, was a dazzlingly rich exploration of the making of art, set in the Victorian world of Gilbert and Sullivan; the beautifully acted "Vera Drake" illuminated a shadowy corner of history as it introduced us to a kind, gentle abortionist in midcentury England.)

Leigh's unique filmmaking style — he creates the characters with the actors through improvisation, before the cameras are turned on — results here in a film in which not much happens; the episodic nature of the plot just tells us, over and over, that Poppy is happy. Characters are introduced and then dropped, such as a bullied child at Poppy's school; and the driving teacher's scenes become monotonous.

It's cheeky fun, though, to watch Poppy hold her own against the teacher and her smug sister Helen (Caroline Martin), a young woman who considers pensions more important than happiness. And the film's final shot, on an idyllic lake, is as breezily pretty as anything I've seen in the movies lately. "Happy-Go-Lucky" doesn't provide many insights (even Poppy seems ultimately unsure about whether happiness can be a permanent condition), but it does provide a little joy — and that's worth celebrating, at the movies and elsewhere.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725

or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com