'Hector and the Search for Happiness': Cynical, sappy, meaningless and just mean

Few comics can portray a manchild as well as

Shaun of the Dead

's Simon Pegg, whose

oeuvre

(pardon my French) is a delightful testament to good writing and solid comic acting.

But Pegg throws it all away with his first attempt at a (purportedly) grown-up story, Hector and the Search for Happiness, a rancid, insulting, and cynical dramedy about a man who travels around the world to reconnect with his soul.

Adapted from an equally hollow self-help novel by French psychiatrist François Lelord (guess not all French shrinks can be Félix Guattari or Jacques Lacan), Hector is a gooey mess stuffed with faux joy, inane feel-goodism, and bumper-sticker philosophy.

Directed by Hannah Montana: The Movie helmer Peter Chelsom and occupying pretty much the same intellectual level, Hector is a comedy that takes its self-serving version of wisdom so seriously, it ends up a grotesque self-parody.

Pegg stars as Hector, a disillusioned London therapist suffering from existential ennui. He's so fed up with his boring, routinized life, his whiny patients, and his controlling girlfriend, Clara (Rosamund Pike), that Hector takes a (really expensive!) trip around the world to find himself.

In Shanghai, he parties with a millionnaire businessman (Stellan Skarsgård). He hangs with monks in the Himalayas, sees an ex-girlfriend (Toni Collette) in Los Angeles, and hands out therapeutic advice to a drug lord (Jean Reno) in Africa.

Where in Africa? We're not told. It's clear this self-satisfied film couldn't care less. To the filmmakers, Africa is a marginal, homogeneous piece of pretty real estate.

Hector records his insights in a journal, which the film cruelly shares with us.

"Listening is loving," Hector writes. Elsewhere, he discovers that "happiness is being loved for who you are."

If it were simply insipid, you could laugh off Hector and the Search for Happiness as a dud. But it's far worse: Filled with embarrassing gosh-golly moments about non-Western cultures, it's a staggering, and insulting, example of cultural myopia.

The depth of the film's cynicism is apparent in a sequence that has Hector fall for a lovely college student (Ming Zhao) in China. He's shocked and delighted to find she is utterly receptive.

Things take a turn when the girl's violent, abusive pimp demands Hector pay up for her services. Hector takes away this piece of insight from the episode: "Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story."

The lesson is simple. Ignorance is bliss. It's OK to be happy, to have a good time while ignoring how your actions hurt others.

I'll take misery over the sort of happiness sold by Pegg's lame movie.

Directed by Peter Chelsom. With Simon Pegg, Rosamund Pike, Toni Collette, Stellan Skarsgård, Jean Reno. Distributed by Relativity Media.

Running time: 2 hours.

Parent's guide: R (profanity, brief nudity).

Playing at: Ritz Five.EndText