Ordinary Happiness is a movie following the choices of a doomed man, Paolo, who was given a whole hour and a half back on earth before the archangels take him back. The film centers on the mistakes he's felt he's made through his entire life, from cheating on his wife several times to not spending time with his daughter and ignoring his son's achievements. The film spends a lot of time looking at snippets of Paolo's life, the choices he's made in the past, and he then uses this period of reflection to become a better person with the time he has left. It's an age old plotline in film; the protagonist has a brush with death (or worse, actually dies) and after reflecting on their past they choose to change their ways and live life as a better person. It's in every form of media across the globe, the same basic plot structure of Ordinary Happiness can be found in episodes of The Twilight Zone, in children's movies such as Megamind and in classic films like It's a Wonderful Life. The issue I take with the presentation of this theme in Ordinary Happiness is that this movie doesn't do a better job than any of those aforementioned retellings of the same basic theme, leading me to ask why I'd want to watch this film when I could watch any of those others and enjoy it more. Paolo is just not as relatable as a character; the moment before he is set to die again he spends most of it thinking back on all the women he'd cheated on his wife with. Whether this is out of guilt or some other emotional complex is beyond me, but the fact of the matter is that I felt he was an unlikeable protagonist. He chooses to change his ways in the end of the film, ignoring a text from a coworker he had been stepping out with previously, but he still was shallow enough to do it several times throughout his life with his wife. Another thing that bothered me was how he essentially broke up with his wife while they were dating the first time because he got tired of waiting at a railroad crossing every time he would visit or go to pick her up. His actions are relatively selfish, and while his accident eventually causes him to realize how horrible he'd been in the past, I personally don't believe, given the insignificant snippets we the audience are shown, that Paolo could maintain the lifestyle he had been while also being so slimy. There are better movies about redemption, I'd rather watch them as opposed to this film.
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