I highly enjoyed this movie. I thought it was funny, inspiring, and perfectly suited for our times. The dialogue was witty and accurate. However, I saw the movie with a bunch of family members who vehemently hated this movie. They raged after it was over: "what a waste of money," "I wanted to leave right away," "She was horrible." Normally I let other people's opinions about movies and books and such just slip out of my mind completely as everyone is entitled to their own thoughts, but the reactions to this one for some reason made me like this movie all the more.
The biggest complaint they had against the movie was the main character Poppy who instilled the entire film with stalwart cheeriness, even in the darker scenes. They said she was annoying. But how many among us don't have a friend like that? One whose cheerfulness never fails to win the day? And don't we always envy them that? They said she was unrealistic. But I readily defended Sally Hawkins performance as quite realistic. I thought she played the overly-peppy school teacher so convincingly that her performance stole the film. It would have been easy for an actress to fall into the cheerful character and lose sight that she was anything but naive. As the movie progresses you can count as the dark notches add up beneath the character's skin, ever so slightly. The emotions that Poppy runs on never become unbelievable and they consistently rely on invisible multidimensionality.
I tried to convince my regretful moviegoing relatives that they missed the point of the movie and that they
were nothing more than the miserable characters who act spiteful towards Poppy's happiness. To no avail of course. I don't know why their reactions bothered me so much. Maybe it is because there is so much this movie is trying to give to the audience and it makes me sad to see people not accept such a gift. The movie is a keen demonstration of the infallible spirit of happiness. It promotes trying new things and living a balanced, healthy, giving life. With mounting depression statistics and growing worries among the contemporary public, it's movies like this that try to be medicine to the hate. And if we aren't accepting of the message we're not acting thankful to the real people like Poppy who exist out there right now trying to administer that medicine. And that means there will be fewer and fewer of them each year.
All this movie was attempting to do was spread a smile. And to hear the word "hate" in regards to it made me sick to the stomach. Because sure, maybe you didn't like the movie, but why can't you accept its message of goodwill and at least not attack it?