Sundance: Day One

The ten-day festival kicks off with a screening of Don Roos' enjoyable comedy 'Happy Endings'.

Jan 22 2005

Day One: Only in Los Angeles.

The Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah opened on Thursday night with a screening of Don Roos' 'Happy Endings', a less than subtle but still enjoyable LA story of intertwining (if barely credible) Californian lives.

The film, which stars a very seductive Maggie Gyllenhaal, Tom Arnold, Lisa Kudrow and Steve Coogan (playing a gay restaurant-owner), mixes themes of adultery, seduction, gay adoption and abortion as three separate stories converge.

It's funnier than it sounds, but it's still a convoluted story that could only ever be set amid the lunacy of Los Angeles. Anywhere else, and you couldn't forgive the extreme characters and the contrived circular structure.

Still, this offering from the director of 'The Opposite of Sex' proved a light-hearted opening to the ten-day fest of drama and documentaries.

Here's hoping for some real discoveries.

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