Where to watch
Available at home
A recently divorced woman reluctantly joins a wilderness survival course with her annoying younger brother and his best friend, leading to unexpected challenges and personal growth.
Trailer
Why watch this film?
Our suggestions
A year after getting divorced, Helen Carpenter, thirty-two, lets her annoying, ten years younger brother talk her into signing up for a wilderness survival course. It's supposed to be a chance for her to pull herself together again, but when she discovers that her brother's even-more-annoying best friend is also coming on the trip, she can't imagine how it will be anything other than a disaster.
"There's a select group of film genres that have worked wonders for Netflix, and one of them is the romantic comedy: no matter the nationality, every few weeks one premieres in the platform's catalog. Adapted from Katherine Center's homonymous novel and directed by Vicky Wight (of A New Eternity, also based on a Center novel), Happiness for Beginners tells a story that seems to be halfway between Eat Pray Love with Julia Roberts and Wild with Reese Witherspoon. The plot follows a recently divorced woman (Ellie Kemper of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) who, to start anew, decides to embark on a demanding survival trip. Predictably, new personal discoveries and romantic sparks arise. Nothing that reinvents the wheel of romantic films, but in this case, as they say, the journey is more interesting than the destination."