Mike Leigh's films have always gone for a naturalistic feel, where commonplace people with drab lives undergo small dramas and discover little diamonds of positivity in the muck. Happy-Go-Lucky may be a step further towards a feelgood experience than most of his previous output, but is still in the same vein and could not feasibly be attributed to any other filmmaker in its formula of banality unmasking fundamental truths.It revolves around a few weeks in the life of 30-year-old schoolteacher Poppy, a nuclear-poweredly irrepressible chirp machine who embodies the film's title. What little plot there is hangs on her driving lessons with a bag of pent-up Little Englander indignation, played finely between comedy and pathetic pathos by Eddie Marsan, and the scenes between them are by far the most substantial parts of the film. As for the rest, Poppy mercifully winds down a little by the end from her nigh-on insufferably screeching motormouth Cockney persona (a bit of a Leigh staple, this), with the benefit of a few sobering experiences. But it all remains basically life-affirming, and one must infer from this that Leigh wants us to rate excessive positivity over bleak pragmatism, even if the cost is terminal irritation.
6/10
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