L!fe Happens - Life Just Happens - Blu-Ray

Movie: Kim (Krysten Ritter) lives a completely carefree life with her two friends Deena (Kim Bosworth) and Laura (Rachel Bilson) in a three-person shared apartment. Especially with Deena she celebrates one party after the other and is not averse to meaningless one-night stands. It's just too bad that one of these adventures doesn't remain without consequences and Kim unexpectedly finds herself confronted with the role of the responsible mother. And that's harder than she thought in her initial naivety. Her job as an assistant to the extremely moody Francesca (Kristen Johnston) is on the line because she once had to take her baby to work with her. She can't party anymore either because she can't afford a babysitter. And her sex life has completely fallen asleep. For Deena, there's only one way out of her misery: a wild night of partying! And sure enough, it seems to help: Kim finally has fun again and meets Nicholas (Geoff Stults), a really cute guy - but she doesn't tell him that she has a baby. But Kim starts to get seriously interested in Nicholas. But you can't build a relationship on a lie...

L!fe Happens was written by Krysten Ritter and her co-writer and director Kat Coiro. Her role, at least at first, is very reminiscent of exactly the type Ritter seems to be primarily cast as: the somewhat loopy party slut. Somehow a bit weird, but still endearing. That's how we know her from Apartment 23, Gilmore Girls, or even the vampire comedy Vamps. Here she has to turn this character into a responsible mother in the course of the story, which she manages to do with a lot of charm. With humor, which is only rarely too overdone, and a good ensemble of actors, a nice comedy is created, which has to fight with a very big problem.

And that are the two main characters. Kim and Deena seem so selfish and superficial, especially at the beginning, that it's hard to feel any real sympathy towards them. While this changes relatively fast with Kim, Deena needs much longer to change into a sympathetic character - actually too long to be able to win the viewers over. The much more charmingly drawn supporting characters, from a cutely naive Laure to the wonderfully smarmy but still very likable Henri (Justin Kirk, who also got to play alongside Ritter in Vamps), manage to keep the viewer from being too annoyed by Kim and Deena's self-absorbed partying to turn off. And that's a good thing in that the film doesn't actually get really funny and charming until the second half.

If you're not expecting more than nice US comedy entertainment that's about female friendships, responsibility, self-discovery and love, this film can definitely be recommended to you due to its likeable cast and some very nice moments, despite its rather bumpy beginning. Worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: While the sound, as usual for a comedy of this kind, has turned out not very spectacular and is mainly determined by dialogues and music, the visual realization can score with a high overall sharpness, a pleasantly warm color scheme and well-matched contrasts. Good!

Extras: As a bonus, there is unfortunately only the trailer for the film.

Conclusion: L!fe Happens is a nice comedy about friendship, love and responsibility that scores with a charismatic cast and some very amusing moments. However, the film suffers a bit from the fact that its main characters are too selfish and not really likeable, especially at the beginning. Only in the course of the story and with the help of the much more charming supporting characters the audience slowly but surely grows fond of the two main characters. Not quite a big hit, but if you are just looking for nice US comedy entertainment or a chick flick of a different kind, you can safely risk a look here

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp