Great movie if you the least bit depressed and need a little boost. For the happy well balanced person, like my spouse, Sandy, the rating is A.
Leaving behind a career as a psychiatrist, a bored and discontented Hector begins a journey across the planet in search of genuine happiness. He has a financially secure practice, a beautiful and loving fiancee who keeps his home life in perfect balance and a group of smart and engaging friends. Along the way, he experiences a succession of unusual adventures that not only alters his perspective, but provides him with a a set of rules for happiness..
From Another Review:
This movie is really a journey on a number of levels. As Hector travels the globe in search of that elusive quality of happiness, he also is going on a personal journey of discovery on a deeper level.Yet, underneath it all, Hector is troubled . . . wondering why he feels empty inside and believes he has not fully experienced life to its fullest.
That fact is thrown in his face by one of his patients, who bluntly tells him he’s really just a shell of a man, only superficially dealing with his patients and not delivering the proper counseling he could give if he was a man of more substance.
Hector decides to take off on a fairly unplanned journey to discover, he hopes, the essence of what makes one truly happy and fulfilled.
There are many, many clever aspects to this story, based on a French novel by Francois Lelord. Hilarious scenes show our psychiatrist's gift for physical comedy as he encounters Stellan Skarsgard, playing an uptight, rich and pleasure-seeking banker on his first flight.
Along the way, we are visually treated to cartoons and scribblings from the journal Hector keeps . . . and put up on the screen . . . that document his musings on the search for true happiness. ( See site for list below). Among my favorites are his observations that “Avoiding unhappiness is not the road to happiness,” and “Happiness is not a destination, but a state of being.”
Our reluctant hero makes his way from Shanghai to Tibet (and a spiritual encounter with a group of monks) to Africa, where he connects with an old school chum — and learns that doctor to the indigent is, in fact, gay.
The tale veers back and forth from some over-the-top funny moments to ones that are poignant, sad and sometimes downright frightening . . . as when Hector is kidnapped and imprisoned by a gang of thugs in South Africa.
Ultimately, Hector ends up in Los Angeles, where he nervously meets with the woman who was his first true love, who he never gave up thinking about. That relationship was the main impediment to him going forward.
This film is a winner. It will not only entertain you, but also make you think about what it takes to bring happiness into your own life.
You will find the rules Hector finds for happiness at :http://jchyip.blogspot.com/2011/01/hectors-list-of-happiness.html. READ THEM!!
As an aside, A cousin of mine, who teaches at Harvard, and who's classes are filled to the brim, researches this subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Gilbert_(psychologist)
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