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Happiness Runs
Metascore
24 out of 100

Generally unfavorable - based on 9 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 9
  3. Negative: 5 out of 9
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  1. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Aaron Hillis
    60
    Loosely based on writer-director Adam Sherman's similar cult upbringing and disillusionment, the film builds on a fascinating cautionary tale, but doesn't develop its characters past whatever movie-of-the-week crisis each suffers from.
  2. Boxoffice Magazine
    Reviewed by: Amy Nicholson
    50
    We get the broad strokes of how the hippies corrupted their own movement, but there isn't a single lead character we'd give a dollar to on Haight Street.
  3. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Joe Neumaier
    40
    The kids' story gets out of control, but Andie MacDowell is a pleasantly earthy mess as Victor's out-of-it mother, and familiar New York faces (Ann Magnuson, Mark Boone Jr., Richard Edson) lend quirky support as the out-of-it elders.
  4. Variety
    Reviewed by: Peter Debruge
    40
    Sherman's personal wounds feel fresh, which makes for a superficially beautiful but otherwise bitter story.
  5. New York Observer
    Reviewed by: Rex Reed
    25
    As the film builds to a feverish hysteria, you have to work hard to keep from laughing.
  6. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Sheri Linden
    20
    An overwrought and undernourished drama.
  7. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Stephen Garrett
    20
    Sherman based this obtuse psychosexual dystopia on his own hippie upbringing; the result is virtually teeming with bitter resentment for the drug-addled parent collective that inadvertently turned his adolescence into a chapter from "Lord of the Flies."
  8. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Gary Goldstein
    10
    An astoundingly bad memory piece that blows its potential dramatic heft at every turn.
  9. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    0
    This strident exposé may gladden the hearts of some anti-'60s conservatives, but it is a shapeless mess steeped in prurience. Its grain of truthfulness, however, is just enough to leave you unsettled in the pit of your stomach.
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