'Happy-Go-Lucky' earns a feel-good reputation

Sally Hawkins is Poppy, a grade school teacher with a bottomless reservoir of good will. Her chronic perkiness earns her great friendships and an unusual ability to see good things in unlikely places. And even when bad things happen, Poppy never lets it get her down.

But while Poppy seems hermetically sealed in a bubble of goodness, there is a world out there that fails to see things her way. When Poppy decides to learn how to drive, she meets Scott (Eddie Marzan), the ultra-negative counterpoint to her positive effusiveness. As her driving instructor, Scott is a critical, bile-spewing malcontent who seems to hate his job and most of his students but appears to develop something like affection for his latest pupil.

Working with his actors to develop the story, Leigh ("Vera Drake,” "Topsy Turvy”) finds poignancy in Poppy’s teaching of a troubled boy and her growing relationship with a genial school psychologist, but some vignettes don’t go anywhere, including an encounter with a homeless man. But the most prominent players, Hawkins and Marzan, have chemistry that makes their scenes hilarious and unsettling, making "Happy-Go-Lucky” a feel-good movie with depth and emotional honesty.

— George Lang

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