Happy-Go-LuckyMovies like Happy-Go-Lucky
- Key Features:
- Optimism, Free spirit, Teacher, London, Character study, Social commentary, Eccentricity, Personal growth, Relationships, Kindness, Resilience, Joy, Self-acceptance
- Tone:
- humorous, whimsical, earnest
- Target Audience:
- Independent film enthusiasts, Character-driven story lovers, Viewers seeking uplifting content, Those who appreciate quirky comedies
- Emotional Arc:
- Joy → Challenge → Acceptance
Happy-Go-Lucky

A look at a few chapters in the life of Poppy, a cheery, colorful, North London schoolteacher whose optimism tends to exasperate those around her.
Happy-Go-Lucky
At a crossroads after her divorce, a schoolteacher ventures toward a fresh start in life — and love — when she signs up for a grueling group hiking trip.

A divorced teacher suddenly becomes jealous of everyone, including her daughter, friends and neighbors.

An inner-city high school teacher discovers she is pregnant at the same time as one of her most promising students and the two develop an unlikely friendship while struggling to navigate their unexpected pregnancies.

Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, Andy is a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, Natalie is a plumber and Nicola is jobless. This film is about how they interact and play out family, conflict and love.

Slice-of-life look at a sweet working-class couple in London, Shirley and Cyril, his mother, who's aging quickly and becoming forgetful, mum's ghastly upper-middle-class neighbors, and Cyril's pretentious sister and philandering husband. Shirley wants a baby, but Cyril, who reads Marx and wants the world to be perfect, is reluctant. Cyril's mum locks herself out and must ask her snooty neighbors for help. Then Cyril's sister Valerie stages a surprise party for mum's 70th birthday, a disaster from start to finish. Shirley holds things together, and she and Cyril may put aside her Dutch cap after all.

Agathe Langlois, Parisian until the end of the nails well varnishes, is delighted: she is going to be confirmed as a professor of English. The happiness of the good news will not last as she learns that she is deployed to the countryside.

After her husband leaves her, a woman travels to London for the funeral of the pop star, Victor Fox, she's adored all her life. There, she meets the lover of the dead pop star, and convinces him to come back to Chicago with her to figure out who killed the singer.

A young college student in London moves into a flat and becomes best friends with a flatmate; the former moves into her own flat 4 years later but 6 years after their parting, the former returns to London to pay the latter a visit.

Penny works at a supermarket and Phil is a gentle taxi-driver. Penny’s love for Phil has run dry and they lead joyless lives with their two children, Rachel, a cleaner, and Rory, who is unemployed and aggressive.

Set against the backdrop of a beautiful garden in the heart of London, this contemporary fairy tale revolves around the unlikely friendship between a reclusive young woman and a cantankerous old widower. Bella Brown is a beautifully quirky young woman who dreams of writing and illustrating a successful children’s book. After she is forced by her landlord to deal with her neglected garden or face eviction, she meets her match, nemesis, and unlikely mentor in Alfie Stephenson, a grumpy, loveless, old man who lives next door who happens to be an amazing horticulturalist.

Daphne is a young woman negotiating the tricky business of modern life. Caught in the daily rush of her restaurant job and a nightlife kaleidoscope of new faces, she is witty, funny, the life of the party. Too busy to realise that deep down she is not happy. When she saves the life of a shopkeeper stabbed in a failed robbery, the impenetrable armour she wears to protect herself begins to crack, and Daphne is forced to confront the inevitability of a much-needed change in her life.

An art instructor and an English teacher form a rivalry that ends up with a competition at their school in which students decide whether words or pictures are more important.

Rachel is a 35-year-old school teacher who has no man in her life and lives with her mother. When a man from the big city returns and asks her out, she begins to have to make decisions about her life and where she wants it to go.

Horrified at the prospect of her beloved school being sold, a young French girl named Madeline uses her wit and craftiness to attempt to save it, making an unlikely new friend in the process.

A young girl comes to an embittered town and confronts its attitude with her determination to see the best in life.

In a school where the meeting seems more complete sampling of teachers and professors stupid airhead, there is the class of Peter, repeating in life, which is the "grandfather" to the far more young companions concerning jokes and vulgarity. Even outside the school walls, in the family or in the streets of the village where he lives, Peter is not far behind and his antics continue to freewheel.

Tom and Janet have been happily married for years. But a visit from a mysterious stranger leads to a dead body, a lot of questions, and a tense couples' trip with friends who may not actually be friends at all.

A lonely, chain-smoking office lady in Tokyo falls for her teacher when she decides to take English lessons. When her teacher disappears, she sets out on a journey to find him.

A lady has her prim and proper life turned upside down after discovering her husband's affair.

A resourceful 12-year-old, who secretly lives alone in her flat in a working-class suburb of London, makes money stealing bikes with her best friend Ali and keeps the social workers off her back by pretending to live with an uncle. But when her estranged father turns up out of the blue, she's forced to confront reality.

A high-school gym teacher has big plans for the summer, but is forced to cancel them to teach a "bonehead" English class for misfit goof-off students. Fortunately, his unconventional brand of teaching fun field trips begins to connect with them, and even inspires ardor in some.

After moving to a retirement community, loner Martha eventually befriends her fun-loving neighbor, Sheryl, and forms a cheerleading club for young-at-heart seniors, though they face roadblocks along the way.

Kate is a young woman who has a habit of making bad decisions, and her last date with disaster occurs after she accepts work as Santa's elf for a department store. However, after she meets Tom there, her life takes a new turn.

A mentally challenged girl proves herself to be every bit as capable as her "perfect" sister when she moves into an apartment and begins going to college.

A working-class family in London's East End is struggling to stay afloat during the recession under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Only the mother Mavis is working; father Frank and the couple's two sons Colin, a timid, chronically shy individual and Mark, an outspoken, headstrong young man, are on the dole. This situation is contrasted by the presence of Mavis's sister Barbara, and her husband John, whose financial and social loftiness appears to be a comfortable facade over the unspoken soreness of a lackluster marriage.

Spain, 1966. An English teacher who travels to Almería when he hears that John Lennon is making a film there befriends with a 16-year-old boy who has run away from home and a young girl who also seems to be running away from something.

A clique of four young teachers at a high school looks critically at their colleagues. To avoid falling in the same routine, they bring new ideas into the school lessons and play little games and pranks in their spare time -- sometimes get even more childish than their pupils. When they get opposition from the other teachers, they play tricks to get rid of them.

London bookstore owner William Thacker's quiet life turns upside down when a chance encounter with famous actress Anna Scott sparks an unlikely romance challenged by their vastly different worlds.

Everybody has one—the sibling who is always just a little bit behind the curve when it comes to getting his life together. For sisters Liz, Miranda and Natalie, that person is their perennially upbeat brother, Ned. But as each of their lives begins to unravel, Ned's family comes to realise that Ned isn't such an idiot after all.

London publicist Helen, effortlessly slides between parallel storylines that show what happens when she does or does not catch a train back to her apartment. Love. Romantic entanglements. Deception. Trust. Friendship. Comedy. All come into focus as the two stories shift back and forth, overlap and surprisingly converge.

Lucie is in remission and her illness is almost a distant memory. Her family pushes her to live life to the fullest, and in doing so Lucie meets the charming and arrogant Clovis, who is immediately beguiled by her wit and humor. It is Dalila, however, an eccentric and delightful dance teacher, who inspires Lucie to rebuild her life and to grow into the woman she always wanted to be. For her mother, for her daughter, for Clovis.

At Phoenix Progressive School, students take notes lying on parlor couches and are encouraged to explore their gifts through electives like break-dancing and graphic-novel writing. In the midst of all this liberal pedagogy and budding talent, Molly Maxwell feels unexceptional, until she falls for her attractive English teacher, Ben.

When a well-loved headmaster decides to retire, his scheming pupils have other ideas. The cunning boys unleash a campaign of practical jokes, armed with gin, itching power, and bombs!

A bureaucratic snafu sends Marco Tullio Sperelli, a portly, middle-aged northern Italian, to teach third grade in a poor town outside Naples

A homely but vivacious young woman dodges the amorous attentions of her father's middle-aged employer while attempting to please her glamorously stuck-up roommate Meredith.

A nebbish schoolteacher begs his smooth (and misogynistic) pal to teach him 'the knack' – how to score with women. Serendipitously, the men meet up with a new girl in town, as well as a friendly lunatic who can’t help but paint things white.

Julie, a woman who is unlucky in love despite her bubbly demeanor. Her job at a bookstore takes an interesting twist when she discovers a book titled "Happiness Can Be Learned," and she sets out to fix her love life once and for all.

Elementary school teacher Michele Cortese is about to start a whole new life. After 40 years of teaching in the metropolitan Roman jungle, he had to move to a village in Central Italy, to teach in a tiny school with just a few children aged 7-10. Struggling to overcome his urban inadequacy, he finds a friendly face in vice-principal Agnese and gradually manages to fit in, thanks to her and their spirited pupils. As everything seems to be falling into place, unwelcome news comes through: the school has failed to meet its student quota for the next year and will soon be shut for good.

In one of the poorest areas of Paris, a school counselor devotes herself to working with disadvantaged students, while facing challenges of her own.

An adventurous love story between two young women of different social and economic backgrounds who find themselves going through all the typical struggles of a new romance.

Follows the journey of a 90-year-old atheist and the quirky characters that inhabit his off-the-map desert town. He finds himself at the precipice of life, thrust into a journey of self-exploration.

Eccentric 70-year-old widow purchases the Windmill Theatre in London as a post-widowhood hobby. After starting an innovative continuous variety review, which is copied by other theaters, they begin to lose money. Mrs. Henderson suggests they add female nudity similar to the Moulin Rouge in Paris.

A portrait of the flaws and peculiarities of four type of girls living in different districts of Rome.

Eight very different couples deal with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London.

Nancy Stokes, a retired schoolteacher, is pretty sure she has never had good sex. Now that her husband has died, she is determined to take a tour of sexual vistas that until now she has only imagined. She even has a plan; it involves an anonymous hotel room, and a sex worker who calls himself Leo Grande.

Bridget Jones is an average woman struggling against her age, her weight, her job, her lack of a man, and her various imperfections. As a New Year's resolution, Bridget decides to take control of her life, starting by keeping a diary in which she will always tell the complete truth. The fireworks begin when her charming though disreputable boss takes an interest in the quirky Miss Jones. Thrown into the mix are Bridget's band of slightly eccentric friends and a rather disagreeable acquaintance into whom Bridget cannot seem to stop running or help finding quietly attractive.

An aspiring dancer moves to New York City and becomes caught up in a whirlwind of flighty fair-weather friends, diminishing fortunes and career setbacks.

A mother and daughter move to a small French town where they open a chocolate shop. The town, religious and morally strict, is against them, as they represent free-thinking and indulgence. When a group of gypsies arrive by riverboat, the Mayor's prejudices lead to a crisis.

Christopher is an ambitious college freshman, striving to become a writer. Through a computer fault he's assigned the same room as Alex, a real party freak and... a girl! He's annoyed and tries to get a different room as soon as possible, but when he learns to know her, he also starts to like her. She not only improves his sexual life, but also his writing skills

High school professor Guido is a hopeless romantic whose life falls apart after his girlfriend leaves him. Paolo, a former student of his, helps him in getting out of his depression for a better chance to become a PE teacher himself.

A young Peruvian bear travels to London in search of a home. Finding himself lost and alone at Paddington Station, he meets the kindly Brown family, who offer him a temporary haven.

The everyday life of accountant Levante, his family and the other people of a small town in the Tuscan countryside is taken by storm by the serendipitous arrival of five gorgeous Spanish flamenco dancers.

An intimate family portrait of four hapless but resilient women and the bittersweet lessons they learn in keeping up with the hectic demands of their individual neuroses. Each of the women seeks redemption in her own haphazard way, but whatever salvation they find is illusory and short-lived.

The fantastical tale of a little girl who won't - or can't - follow the rules. Confounded by her clashes with the rule-obsessed world around her, Phoebe seeks enlightenment from her unconventional drama teacher, even as her brilliant but anguished mother looks to Phoebe herself for inspiration.

Captures a generational moment - young people on the cusp of truly growing up, tiring of their reflexive cynicism, each in their own ways struggling to connect and define what it means to love and be loved. Six New Yorkers juggle love, friendship, and the keenly challenging specter of adulthood. Sam Wexler is a struggling writer who's having a particularly bad day. When a young boy gets separated from his family on the subway, Sam makes the questionable decision to bring the child back to his apartment and thus begins a rewarding, yet complicated, friendship. Sam's life revolves around his friends — Annie, whose self-image keeps her from commitment; Charlie and Mary Catherine, a couple whose possible move to Los Angeles tests their relationship; and Mississippi, a cabaret singer who catches Sam's eye.

A psychoanalyst learns to have an illness and as a consequence he decides to quit his job. All his patients get together to find a way to make him feel better.

In this adaptation of the satirical British novel, Flora Poste, a plucky London society girl orphaned at age 19, finds a new home with some rough relatives, the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm. With a take-charge attitude and some encouragement from her mischievous friend, Mary, Flora changes the Starkadders' lives forever when she settles into their rustic estate, bringing the backward clan up to date and finding inspiration for her novel in the process.

School captain Ellie is seriously crushing on her rebellious classmate Abbie. Determined to ask her first love to the year 12 formal, Ellie devises a plan to go public with the invitation but before she can go through with it, her dead aunt Tara reappears from beyond the grave. Believing she's been brought back from the dead to be Ellie's fairy godmother, Tara dishes out unwanted dating advice based on her life as an out lesbian in the '80s.

After thirty years teaching in London, Mark Thackeray retires and returns to Chicago. There, however, the challenge of teaching kids in an inner city school proves to be too much to resist.

The life of a woman is transformed after she is diagnosed with a terminal disease, fired from her job and abandoned by her boyfriend. Given two months to live, she throws caution to the wind to pursue her dreams.

Ben Singer is a failed children's folk singer, a career proofreader, a less-than-extraordinary weekend dad, and perhaps the most negative man alive. Floundering in all aspects of his life, Ben's only comfort comes from regular chess games and friendly debates on game theory with his Senegalese roommate Ibou. When Ibou is suddenly struck ill, Ben's pessimistic worldview seems unequivocally confirmed. It takes an extended visit from Ibou's sister Khadi for Ben to realize that cynicism may be all a matter of perspective.

In 21st century Bucharest, to go out in the city on Saturday evening on the arm of a beautiful woman is a risky financial investment. Ovidiu, an unassuming high school teacher, never could afford it. Looking for a source of income more substantial than a teacher's salary, Ovidiu plunges into a fabulous world – the beggar mob.

Teacher in the most prestigious highschool in the country, François enjoys the life he’s always known, in the intellectual and bourgeois society of Paris. Trapped in a situation where he’s forced to accept a job in a school of a tough underprivileged suburb, he finds himself confronted to his own limits and to the upheaval of his values and certainties.

Professor Lipari teaches in a public school and is in a full-on existential crisis. He has no faith in himself and in the possibility of changing the world for the better. At school, a former student of his who is also a teacher will change his attitude.

The night after another unsatisfactory New Year's party, Tim's father tells his son that the men in his family have always had the ability to travel through time. They can't change history, but they can change what happens and has happened in their own lives. Thus begins the start of a lesson in learning to appreciate life itself as it is, as it comes, and most importantly, the people living alongside us.

A bright high-school senior has her impending status as valedictorian jeopardized when her bitter history teacher, Mrs. Tingle, gives her a poor grade on a project. When an attempt to get ahead in Mrs. Tingle's class goes awry, mayhem ensues and friendships, loyalties and trust are tested by the teacher's intricate mind-games.

An ex-con struggling to readjust to life in his small town forms an intense bond with his former high-school teacher.

A story about 11 girls living in Paris. Each of them has its own problems: career, love life, children. Every girl has their complexes and virtues. They always look elegant, hiding their inner feelings. Will they reach all the goals and overcome all their difficulties?

An endearing light comedy about a woman who spontaneously becomes a resident of Venice after her family left her behind. While enjoying the wonderful people she meets she achieves a new life and the first time independent of her family.

Suddenly finding herself in the never-before-seen Land of Luck, the unluckiest person in the world must unite with the magical creatures there to turn her luck around.

With the help of a talking freeway billboard, a "wacky weatherman" tries to win the heart of an English newspaper reporter, who is struggling to make sense of the strange world of early-90s Los Angeles.

When he suddenly finds himself without his long-standing blue-collar job, Larry Crowne enrolls at his local college to start over. There, he becomes part of an eclectic community of students and develops a crush on his teacher.

Manhattanite Ashley is known to many as the luckiest woman around. After a chance encounter with a down-and-out young man, however, she realizes that she's swapped her fortune for his.

Minnie and Quinn were both born in London on New Year’s Day, in the same hospital, one minute apart. Thirty years later — and very different people — they find themselves thrown together again in the same city on New Year’s Eve.

Donya, a lonely Afghan refugee and former translator, spends her twenties drifting through a meager existence in Fremont, California. Shuttling between her job writing fortunes for a fortune cookie factory and sessions with her eccentric therapist, Donya suffers from insomnia and survivor's guilt over those still left behind in Kabul as she desperately searches for love.

Surrounded by the eccentric faculty of Truman High School, Mitch Carter wins the California Teacher of the Year award and immediately receives a tempting offer that may force him to leave his job.

After having lost his job for having saved a child accused of shop lifting, Frédéric Barbier decides to become a school teacher with some funny results.The great comedy actor Coluche is excellent as a simple school teacher.

Mamma Stella is on edge. As if she hadn't got enough trouble already with her daughter Rosa Maria, who has left her husband now Costantino, her son, has disrobed. Afraid to be the talk of the village, relegates him to a distant lighthouse belonging to the family. But Costantino does not remain far from the madding crowd for long. It does not take long indeed before all the local (or even distant) outcasts flock together there: Magnolia, a retired escort girl; Arturo, Rosa Maria's estranged husband; Valbona, a lesbian; Rosa Maria herself; and, to crown it all, two eccentric workers accompanied by a little girl... After a period of chaos, this small world gradually discovers that unity makes strength.

Conflict arises in the small town of Holly Springs when an old woman's death causes a variety of reactions among family and friends.

Margherita is a 14 year old living in Milano, who shares everything with her friends. They discuss clothes, music, school and that first kiss. A delightful coming-of-age film in which the here and now is all that really matters. Where every little thing is so very important and where feelings sometimes bubble over. In your teens, there’s no room for anything but friendship and love.

A young woman's plans to propose to her girlfriend while at her family's annual holiday party are upended when she discovers her partner hasn't yet come out to her conservative parents.

When Steve Coogan is asked by The Observer to tour the country's finest restaurants, he envisions it as the perfect getaway with his beautiful girlfriend. But, when she backs out on him, he has no one to accompany him but his best friend and source of eternal aggravation, Rob Brydon.

During a year, a very content couple approaching retirement are visited by friends and family less happy with their lives.

There's a new girl in school, Angela, the Headmaster's neice. Every male will try to seduce her, even her uncle. Meanwhile she will drive the philosophy's teacher mad and her best friend Irma will have a good time with the classmates. Will they get the grades?

Determined not to turn into her parents, or be drawn into any relationship longer than a one night stand, Zoe constantly struggles with her failing business and love life. Then she falls in love for the first time with Paul. But there's one problem: Paul is married.

Small-town Pennsylvania schoolteacher Linda Sinclair balances her staid home life with an incredible passion for her subject. Then a former star pupil reenters her life after failing as a playwright in New York City. Seeing in his script the inspiration that she has always longed to instill in her students, this dyed-in-the-wool romantic enlists the help of long-suffering drama teacher Carl to mount the work as the high school’s next and riskiest production.

Sixteen-year-old Poppy has everything her unlimited credit cards can buy, and a spoiled attitude to match. After a final thoughtless prank, her exasperated father ships her off to boarding school in England. There, Poppy meets her match in a stern headmistress and a class full of girls who will not tolerate her selfishness.

A perfect housewife, who just happens to be sex-starved, struggles to keep her emotions in check when an attractive family moves in next door.

A maths teacher acquires the power to travel into movies to save the woman of his dreams and bring her back to her correct film.

Ernesto and Filippo, two high school teachers, couldn’t be more different: Filippo is a cheerful liberal who is constantly online. Handsome and youthful, he is a serial seducer on the social networks. Ernesto, instead is a stern conservative, rigorously computerless. He is probably the last person around who still has a first-generation cell phone and his teaching methods are very traditional. They used to be best friends but an unresolved fight kept them far apart, until the day fate intervened and they found themselves teaching at the same school. Their opposite viewpoints will soon and inevitably lead to a new clash. The internet will force them to deal with their past, which resurfaces in the shape of Nina, a young woman who conducts an experiment on them: Filippo must try to leave the world of Internet and Ernesto must try to enter it.

School headmaster Brian Stimpson is obsessed with timeliness, order, and discipline. Brian misses his train after meticulously preparing a speech for an education conference. With no one else to turn to, he asks young former student Laura Wisely for a ride. Laura, upset over a break-up, agrees to drive him in her parents' car - which alarms her mother and father, who worry that she has run away with a married man and subsequently alert the police.

A lazy, incompetent middle school teacher who hates her job and her students is forced to return to her job to make enough money for a boob job after her rich fiancé dumps her.

Stuck at a crossroads in her personal life, it falls on high school English teacher Miss Stevens to chaperone three of her students — Billy, Margot and Sam — on a weekend trip to a drama competition.

A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.

Two not-too-bright party girls reinvent themselves for their high school reunion. Armed with a borrowed Jaguar, new clothes and the story of their success as the inventors of Post-It notes, Romy and Michele descend on their alma mater, but their façade crumbles quickly.

Emma Woodhouse is a congenial young lady who delights in meddling in other people’s affairs. She is perpetually trying to unite men and women who are utterly wrong for each other. Despite her interest in romance, Emma is clueless about her own feelings, and her relationship with gentle Mr. Knightley.

Hapless Henry Palfrey is patronised by his self-important chief clerk at work, ignored by restaurant waiters, conned by shady second-hand car salesmen, and, worst of all, endlessly wrong-footed by unspeakably rotten cad Raymond Delauney who has set his cap at April, new love of Palfrey's life. In desperation Henry enrolls at the College of Lifemanship to learn how to best such bounders and win the girl.

Over one intense day, the devoted head teacher of a last-chance reform school strives to keep his students in line while facing pressures of his own.

