October 1, 1999 | Happy, Texas is a comedy about two escaped convicts who pretend to be gay — and romantically involved — while posing as beauty-pageant producers for the gullible locals in a small Lone Star town. Sounds perfectly dreadful, doesn’t it?
But don’t let the bare-bones synopsis scare you off. One of the most popular offerings at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Happy, Texas is a fresh, frisky and very funny feel-good comedy that delights in upending expectations by avoiding cheap shots and demeaning caricatures. The moviemakers evidence an uncommon generosity of spirit that greatly enhances the comical contrivances of the mistaken-identity plot. We are invited to laugh with, not at, the vividly drawn characters, and to empathize with their sometimes foolish, sometimes fearless and almost always frantic behavior.
The fun begins when two mismatched convicts — Harry (Jeremy Northam), a smooth-talking con artist, and Wayne (Steve Zahn), a chronic petty criminal — go AWOL from a Texas chain gang. To avoid a police dragnet, they swipe a banged-up Winnebago and put the pedal to the metal. Much later, several miles down the road, the escapees discover they have stolen a vehicle that belongs to a pair of minor-league showbiz types who specialize in producing children’s beauty pageants. Just as important, they also discover that the producers are — well, more than just good friends.
Harry and Wayne must assume the identities of the vehicle’s owners when Sheriff Chappy Dent (William H. Macy) escorts them into Happy, Texas, the kind of sleepy little town that makes Mayberry look like a bustling metropolis. The good citizens of Happy are surprisingly accepting of their “sensitive” visitors, and with good reason: They hope the producers can qualify their little darlings for the Little Miss Squeezed Pageant. Naturally, neither escapee knows much about choreography or costume design. Even so, they’re forced to fake some expertise in order to hide out in Happy.
Working from a script he co-wrote with Ed Stone and Phil Reeves, first-time director Mark Illsey earns points simply by refusing to push too hard. Harry and Wayne may pretend to be gay, but that doesn’t mean they indulge in a lot of limp-wristed, tail-wagging shtick. Likewise, the whole idea of a beauty pageant for little girls may strike you as inherently absurd — or, in this era of Jon Benet Ramsey, off-puttingly creepy — but the movie doesn’t waste your time or insult your intelligence by belaboring the obvious. Indeed, rather than aim satirical barbs at an easy target, Happy, Texas views all the fuss over the beaming little girls in their sequined finery with a bemused smile, not a condescending sneer.
Happy — billed as “The Town Without a Frown” — seems like a great place to visit, especially if, like Harry and Wayne, you’re in desperate need of a little all-embracing hospitality. Some of the locals extend an especially warm welcome to the visitors: Lovelorn bank manager Josephine McClintock (Ally Walker) confides her romantic problems to Harry — whom she views as “safe” because of his sexual orientation —while schoolteacher Miss Schaefer (Illeana Douglas) finds herself reluctantly drawn to the seemingly gay Wayne. Zahn plays Wayne with a zestful and limber goofiness, while Northam takes a subtler but equally effective approach as Harry. In turn, Walker gives a smart and tart performance as the cynical (yet vulnerable) banker, while Douglas is amusing and engaging as the naïve (but not entirely clueless) schoolteacher.
Eventually, Sheriff Dent finds the courage to open his heart and express his own romantic longings. Macy plays the sad-eyed lawman with such tender grace and melancholy dignity that you can’t help feeling elated when, at the very end, he, too, is matched with a significant other. Happy, Texas is a movie in which everyone who deserves a happy ending gets exactly what’s coming to him or her.
