Cast’s rapport livens a far too familiar script

FILM

Happiness Never Comes Alone

M

While there is nothing terribly wrong with Happiness Never Comes Alone, it’s just a little too generic to linger in the memory more than 10 minutes after the credits role.

After delivering his latest jingle to the bullying head of an advertising agency, the rakish musician Sacha (Gad Elmaleh) offers a lift to one of the firm’s employees, Sophie Marceau’s Charlotte, who is struggling under an umbrella in the rain.

Charlotte refuses — she doesn’t need to have seen the first 15 minutes of the movie to spot Sacha as a ladies’ man — then tumbles ignominiously to the pavement.

He picks her up, shuffles her into his sports car and, voila, the match is made as surely as a crunchy baguette and a slice of brie.

After various carnal entanglings in their super-stylish apartments — his laden with music and posters of old Hollywood movies, hers with a circular bookcase that will have you googling the furniture maker — love blossoms. Complications occur when Charlotte reveals she has three children from two failed marriages, with one of the fathers the strutting head of the ad agency currently giving Sacha grief (Francois Berleand).

While the plot is familiar from myriad American sitcoms and movies (basically, how to reconcile romance and children), the chief pleasure of Happiness Never Comes Alone are its two stars who have such a nice rapport you’re happy to watch even when the film slips into a familiar groove.

Elmaleh, a Jew of French-Moroccan descent, is a lovable loose-limbed comedian in the Sandler or Carrey mould and always fun to watch, especially when he is goofing around with Charlotte’s children (he does a couple of slapstick routines that are nods to Charlie Chaplin, a clear influence on the movie).

Curiously, it’s not Elmaleh but Marceau who gets all the pratfalls playing the klutzy Charlotte. The 46-year-old Marceau is still a stunner, so director James Huth must have thought it would be fun to have her slip on wet streets and tumble down staircases.

The pratfalls, the gaggle of goofy friends, Sacha’s foul-mouthed Eddie McGuire-inappropriate Jewish grandmother, pretty music montages and Sacha’s dream of being a Broadway composer all feel as familiar as a photograph of the Eiffel Tower.

But I can think of worse ways to spend an evening than watch the lovely Marceau go head over gleaming high heels.

Happiness Never Comes Alone is now screening.