Hector and the Search for Happiness

Hector, a psychiatrist in London, spends his days teaching his patients about happiness while his own life circles inside a routine. One day he drops everything and sets out to find what happiness is: China, Africa, America. He takes notes in a book along the way and each stop gives a different answer. Peter Chelsom directed and wrote the screenplay with Tinker Lindsay and Maria von Heland. Simon Pegg plays Hector and Rosamund Pike plays Clara. It was released on 15 August 2014. The source is the 2002 novel by the French writer Francois Lelord. The English translation appeared in 2010 and the book has sold more than two million copies. The best-known criticism of the novel carries straight over to the film. Emma Hagestadt in The Independent wrote that its lessons for life verge on the banal while the effect is unexpectedly cheering. Who it is for: viewers who like feel-good road films and are curious about Pegg in a dramatic register. Who it is not for: anyone uneasy with a Westerner looking for happiness in the Far East and Africa. The film follows that route without questioning it.