“What’s your agenda?” asks Ruby sharply when Sam expresses his interest in her. Ruby Weaver (Marisa Tomei) has recently been diagnosed as a serial co-dependent by her therapist and friends. Sam Deed (Vincent D’Onofrio) is from the future (the 2470s, to be exact). He found her photograph and traveled back four centuries to Manhattan, 1999. Ruby doesn’t know this yet. Like the urban singles of Sex and the City, jaded by past relationships and skeptical of men, she is still in search of love.
Director Brad Anderson’s Happy Accidents skips the courtship and delves into the guts of the relationship. Their meeting and ensuing date are filmed at fast-forward speed. As Sam explains, “Time is an emotional thing,” and it flies when they are having fun. The movie drastically slows when problems arise from Sam’s explanation that he is a “backtraveler” from the Atlantic coast of Iowa (glacial melting having long submerged the rest of us). Not only has Sam come to the past to find Ruby, he has come to save her from an accidental death.
For a few scenes we are bombarded by sweet sci-fi details such as Sam’s barcode tattoo, his uncanny language ability and a straight-faced explanation of UFOs. But prepare yourself?poor editing and a handful of narrative glitches make for a bumpy ride.
Marisa Tomei plays a sincere Ruby, though her acting varies in intensity throughout the movie. At times her frustration seems unwarranted and annoying. She must decide whether to love Sam (the “backtraveller”), cure Sam of his well-intentioned lunacy (and then love him) or leave Sam, the last link on an ever-growing chain of fucked-up guys. Vincent D’Onofrio carries this film with a beautiful, unwaivering performance. Every facial expression and gesture reverberate from within?proving that despite being born in the 2470s, he is a rare “biological.” In the end we are left with the same decision as Ruby?whether or not to believe him.
Anderson, who also directed the perfect Next Stop Wonderland, approaches his subject matter with an appealing and romantic na?vete. Although he provides plenty of questions regarding love and the temporal universe, he answers none. After all, who is to say what the world will be like in 2470? Why is an asparagus an asparagus and not a pickle, a mistake Sam makes during dinner with Ruby’s parents? With the aid of some interesting but low-budget camera maneuvers, Anderson conveys the vagary of truth and language. Even Ruby’s conversations with her therapist become futile attempts to uncover a purely subjective truth. In Anderson’s arbitrary forest of reality his characters have but one navigational tool: a heart.
There is one bona fide time traveler in Happy Accidents: Anthony Michael Hall. Yes, the nerdy guy from Sixteen Candles has apparently beamed himself into the 21st century. Though he plays a minor role as himself, he assists one of the best scenes in the movie. At a gallery opening, he prompts a very drunk Sam to reveal his secret while Ruby’s physicist ex-boyfriend pompously denies the possibility of time-travel. Goaded by Hall’s approval of what he considers great improv, Vincent D’Onofrio unleashes his inner stand-up comedian in a hysterical explanation of the future.
Inspired by French sci-fi featurette La Jetee, Happy Accidents remains essentially a romantic comedy. Anderson owes more attention to a scene in which Ruby talks with her mother, a fellow co-dependent, about her relationship. Her mother, played by Tovah Feldshuh, explains that relationships are battles for supremacy, and that the work of a successful co-dependent?having fixed and altered her partner?is not always the best thing for the relationship. In this scene Anderson finally throws us a bone, or a couple of truthful trinkets: Relationships are nothing without trust, and in trusting, we can enjoy what we have.
