Ellie Kemper’s career high water mark was the delightful, quick and witty series “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” created by Tina Fey and probably the funniest series Netflix has yet produced.
So it’s no surprise that she’d want to return to the scene of her greatest triumph. But “Happiness for Beginners” isn’t a series, it’s a rom-com. And it wasn’t created by Tina Fey, but by Irish writer-director Vicky Wight and her Irish co-writer Katherine Center. Suffice it to say neither is Tina Fey. That’s a pretty high bar to clear.
What they cooked up for Kemper is a role that doesn’t play to her stand-by strengths, that gee-whiz “innocent” and “naive” thing she rode through “The Office” and 52 episodes of “Kimmy Schmidt.” She’s older, so the girlish goofiness is gone, replaced here by an over-sharing, somewhat embittered 40ish divorcee who thinks a long group-hike along the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut and New York will be just the reset her life needs.
Helen was warned about the clumsy, short-attention-span oaf she married — mainly by her younger brother (Alexander Koch), who doubled-down on that warning on her wedding day.
Six years later, one year into a separation/divorce in which her douche-bro ex (Aaron Roman Weiner) won’t stop calling and trying to win her back, she takes up this backpacking course/backpacking trip with a goal of “getting my certificate” in such things.
“I want to stop breaking promises to myself,” she vows.
The idea is to surround Kemper with oddball “types” — the gay “aspiring actor” (Nico Santos), the Wall Street “bro” (Esteban Benito), the flake (Gus Birney) with a “fear of wood,” a self-described “millennial” who keeps breaking her own “vow of silence (Julia Shiplet),” “Windy with an ‘i'”(Shayvawn Webster) and the young eco-warrior/martinet hike-leader, Beckett (Ben Cook) who lectures and berates them constantly.
No rushing, no malingering, no littering, no stepping on logs, no shampoo (“It kills algae and bacteria”) even though “Seriously? That’s what we’re worried about, now?”
Surely some of those “types” will produce laughs, given a funny line. The scarcity of the former and utter lack of the latter hobble this picture from the start.
The “love interest” is Helen’s kid brother’s best friend Jake (Luke Grimes of the “Fifty Shades” franchise and TV’s “Yellowstone”) who just happens to be on the hike with them. He obviously crushes on Helen, and she abruptly and inexplicably flips-out at his presence and barks at him right up to the moment when they seem to click.
“Contrived” situations like that rarely play as amusing. But when you’ve wasted a perfectly good Blythe Danner appearance and then weighed down your late second act with “big secrets” that would drown a better comedy than this, you’re not making the case that Netflix should sign you to a lifetime contract, no matter how charmingly Irish you are.
The “big test” the hikers face is as contrived as pretty much everything else. Buy five, get one free day at the plot contrivance store?
Kemper seems ill at ease playing this mean, and has little chemistry with Grimes. And none of the supporting players, even the “bear hang” joke/punning gay guy, are any help.
Kemper’s still got good work in her, one would ope. But she’s no longer too young to realize “You can’t go home again,” even if “home” is a streaming service which made her a star.
Rating: TV-14, some profanity
Cast: Ellie Emper, Luke Grimes, Blythe Danner, Gus Birney, Nico Santos, Alexander Koch, Shayvawn Webster, Julia Shiplet, Esteban Benito and Ben Cook.
Credits: Directed by Vicky Wight, scripted by Vicky Wight and Katherine Center. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:44
