Happy Texas (1999) *

Directed by Mark Illsley. With Steve Zahn, Jeremy Northam and William H.Macy. A good-natured, but ultimately failed farce about two convicts on the lam who find themselves in a small Texas town hosting a beauty pageant for little girls. The film carefully avoids any narrative compulsions, focusing squarely on its protagonists, and trying desperately to squeeze every ounce of humor of out of their predicaments. Unfortunately, there is no chemistry between Zahn and Northam. The latter's foppish-dandy mannerisms are just plain annoying and they hardly fit with Zahn's clenched-teeth-and-burning-eyes approach to comedy acting.