In a dramatic context, the film revolves around Hector, an eccentric psychiatrist who has a fundamental problem: he can not make people happier at all, which is the primary and most difficult goal of any successful psychiatrist. Hector decides to start a journey around the world to try to understand the mysterious thing called happiness. In the middle of a series of interesting events.
Potential peeps out occasionally in Hector and the Search for Happiness, but then flounders and gets lost in a bland sea of sentimentality and cultural myopia.
In look and feel, Hector and the Search for Happiness is a cross between The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Eat Pray Love and is only marginally better than those films.
Full of good intentions and lessons, perhaps this was the reason to its great success as a book, but as a movie it fails entirely. [full review in Spanish]
While there's limited value in Hector's search for happiness and the dozen-plus "lessons" he learns about the emotional state, the film works nicely as a character piece.
Staggering out of Hector and The Search For Happiness, I had the impression of having witnessed an unequivocal fiasco, a film no human being would be likely to enjoy.
