LIFE DURING WARTIME (USA 2009) ***
Directed by Todd Solondz

Living a normal life could be like fighting a war!  Solondz’s characters in LIFE DURING WARTIME experience such!

A sequel to the ultra disturbing HAPPINESS which had characters like a pedophile and sex phone operator, naughty boy director Todd Solondz’s LIFE DURING WARTIME is not bad a movie.  The atmosphere of the HAPPINESS is still present with sarcasm in the forefront of every sequence.  One problem with LIFE DURING WARTIME is the fact that most audiences would probably have not seen HAPPINESS and even if they did (I did twice), can hardly recall that much about the characters or their dialogue.  Moreover the characters are played by different actors in this film.

Thus, much will be missed when viewing this film though much of it will still be comprehensible.  The best segment is still belongs to the pedophile’s (this time played by Ciaran Hinds) as he returns to disrupt the family’s normal life.  But normality is prevented from the haunting of the deed that will never run away.  Funny, black to morbid and frightening accurate to a degree, but not as edgy or good as HAPPINESS.