Ellie Kemper isn’t quite as unbreakable as Kimmy Schmidt in her new movie, but she may prove to be reparable as a recently divorced woman processing her issues on a wilderness retreat. Happiness for Beginners hits Netflix on July 27.
Adapted from Katherine Center’s smash hit 2015 novel of the same name by writer and director Vicky Wight, Happiness for Beginners sees the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star as 30-something Helen, still reeling from her recent split from her husband, Mike (Aaron Roman Weiner), who decides to break out of her paradigm by signing onto a wilderness survival hike in the picturesque Wyoming backwoods, where she hopes to shake off her doldrums by trying something new.
On the trail she’s joined by a mixed bag of fellow travellers, including gay BFF Hugh (Nico Santos), spacey Kaylee (Gus Birney), finance bro Mason (Esteban Benito), expedition leader Beckett (Ben Cook), and her brother’s best friend, Jake (Luke Grimes, staying close to his Yellowstone stomping grounds), who remembers when she “used to be fun”. Romcom fans don’t need a map and a compass to see where this is going…
Following in the footsteps of How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Eat Pray Love, Happiness for Beginners differs in that it’s about a quarter-life crisis rather than a mid-life crisis, but judging from the trailer it hits some familiar but welcome points about self-actualisation and carpe-ing the diem. Director Vicky Wright has only two prior films under her belt, but given that one of them, 2020’s The Lost Husband, is also an adaptation of a Katherine Center novel, she’s in comfortably familiar territory. Kemper’s always fun to watch, plus we get the great Blythe Danner in support as Helen’s world-wise grandmother Gigi, always ready to dispense much-needed advice (although she does not, we must point out, go hiking). Sounds like a winning combination to us.
