Movie review: Hector and the Search for Happiness

Simon Pegg roams the globe as Hector in Hector and the Search for Happiness.

Hector and the Search for Happiness (M)
120 minutes

Happiness is an elusive quality that is much sought after and desired by us all.

But how is it achieved and what does it look like?

Those were the questions that helped psychiatrist Hector (Simon Pegg) break out of his comfortable life.

Seemingly, Hector had the perfect life.

He had a beautiful girlfriend, Clara (Rosamund Pike), a great job and a very comfortable, ordered life.

But something was missing and his psychiatric patients offered him little professional satisfaction.

It was time to go looking for answers to the question: What is happiness?

And so the journey begins that takes Hector across the globe. Leaving Clara, Hector needs to finds answers to his own happiness as well as information that will help him assist his patients.

Hector takes the approach of embracing whatever he finds and interacting with all sorts of people. His openness and warmness opens doors and offers experiences he has never had or imagined before.

Hector's faithful companion throughout is his travel diary, where he records all his observations about happiness.

First stop is Shanghai in China, then a monastery in Tibet before he visits an old friend running a medical clinic in Africa.

Lastly, he stops in on Los Angeles to visit his first love, Agnes (Toni Collette), to find out why they didn't end up together.

But Hector's journey is not all rosy. He encounters a drug dealer/gangster and only barely survives. Even that offers him some insights.

Hector and the Search for Happiness is not typical Simon Pegg fare.

Though his humour is evident, this is a deeper role for him and subtly offers some wonderful insights into happiness that is applicable in our everyday lives.

Watch the trailer for Hector and the Search for Happiness below: