How do you feel about being a psychologist? I think I’d like the Rorschach tests and I’d love trying to piggyback folks back into the human race, but I think I’d be fairly impatient about it. Good thing I’m not one, I guess. Hector (Simon Pegg), however, is. And far as I can tell, he goes from being a reasonable psychologist to a shoddy quack in a space of about 7 seconds.
Hector and Clara (Rosamund Pike) are one of those English couples only sedentary people envy – childless, neat, regulated and efficient. I bet their sex is timed. This are people who don’t need questions in their lives. Out of the blue, and it really does seem out of the blue –I didn’t sense a trigger– Hector wants something else. Instead of doodling, he yells at a patient. I love the moment where, nonplussed by his anger, she hems and haws about returning and he challenges her noncommittal response by stealing her empty calendar and saying, “OWN IT!”
Later that evening, Hector asks his significant other, “are you happy?” This isn’t a question you ask a significant other. Strangely, however, Hector doesn’t have break up in the back of his mind; he just needs to explore. Alone. Boy, when I describe it that way, it does sound like a break up, huh? Well, without making a commitment to his own relationship, Hector decides to travel abroad entirely in search of “what makes people happy?” The animated journal entries here are quite clever. The bullet points on the subject rank from the trite to the not-so-trite-when-you-think-about-it. If you’re not in tears by #14, you might not have a heart.
I’m disturbed by the blanket “I’m going to China” and “I’m going to Africa” announcements. 
These are large and very diverse places. You can’t really pigeon hole continent-sized land masses and their denizens into one experience. I really wish the film had pointed out the destination of “Shanghai” like it did for “Los Angeles.” I still have no idea where he went in Africa. Pretty sure it wasn’t Johannesburg.
Hector and the Search for Happiness is all over the map both geographically and emotionally. The film has a problem mixing sex jokes (there’s some great fun with the deliberate foreign mispronunciation of “Happiness” – lose the “h” sound and emphasize the second syllable; I’m not gonna spell it out any better than that) with third-world warlord prison brutality. I’m not sure Simon Pegg is the ideal actor for such extremes – like making him the deliberate flunkee in first class to the annoyance of Stellan Skarsgård. Doesn’t Simon seem better suited as the guy who gets annoyed on the plane, rather than the troublemaker? His natural goofiness tends to undermine the nature of any dramatic message. If you can handle the goof and grim in one, this pic might be worth your while.
Unstable doctor you’ll probably like-o
Globetrotting by plane, foot and bike-o
This existential sleuth
Searching for truth
Blurs line between psychologist and psycho
Rated R, 114 Minutes
D: Peter Chelsom
W: Maria von Heland, Peter Chelsom & Tinker Lindsay
Genre: The literal map meets the symbolic emotional map
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Travelers
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The anal retentive
