SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

sol ***SPOILERS*** " What Happened Was" is a story about hurt and loneliness in the big city and how it effects two people Michael & Jackie Tom Noonan & Karen Sillas, who are co-workers at a big NYC law firm.Michael is a paralegal and Jackie is an executive assistant as they both spend what at first seems to be a quite evening dinner at Jackie's apartment that leads to an emotional explosion which exposes the mask that they've been wearing at their job all these years. Jackie really likes Michael very much and finds in him the reason for her to get up every morning and go to work. Single like Michael she as well as him want to have a relationship to put a wedge between the loneliness that they both feel but living as they do in a major modern metropolis in a way forces them not to be themselves. Michael is far more deluded then Jackie, who's more down to earth and honest about herself, in him thinking that he's a big time social activist who's writing a book, that he tells Jackie took him fifteen years to write, about the law profession and how it hurts those that it deals with. Michael in fact is really a very insecure young man afraid of facing life and thus losing himself in a fantasy world that he created for himself inside his living room watching TV shows mostly on the Discovery Channel. It comes as a great shock to Michael's ego when Jackie shows him a children book that she wrote that was published unlike his imaginary work on social injustice. Throughout the entire film Jackie does what she can to loosen Michael up, with almost an entire bottle of wine, and in the end he does seem to come out of his shell and really starts to get it on with Jackie. Still his insecurity keeps him from really being responsive to her feelings about him and it's that reaction that leaves Jackie in tears as she feels she made a fool of herself trying to get Michael to fall in love with her like she's with him. Michael is finally brought down to earth when he realizes how he hurt Jackie with his overwhelming sense of self-importance. Michael's clumsy attempt to make things right after he tried to leave her just as Jackie thought he would stay over night left her with a sense of outraged. It's then that she tells Michael just what she thought of him, this after how she felt all this time about him, and how he was the only person to make her happy in the office that they both worked at. That revelation by Jackie hit Michael so hard that for once he opens up to her and is honest about himself, not at first realizing her feelings that she had for him, and tries to make amends for what he, unconsciously, put her through that evening. Heart-felt and moving film about how people have trouble connecting with each other and how two people who worked and were friends for years at the job together are like fish out of water and strangers when they meet and try to start up a serious relationship out of the workplace.

lboller-1 I really loved this movie. The situation is easy to relate to, at least at the beginning. These two office workers are lonely and want to find someone, but each is struggling with "how to begin" and "what to reveal." I laughed at each of the characters and felt sorrow for each of them as well. The climax, I believe, is her monologue about the children's book she is writing. She delivers a fine performance, and Mr. Noonan's response is perhaps that of the audience. I shifted in my seat, peering into a soul perverted by anxiety and solitude. In one final coup, however, Noonan leaves us hanging, with the man more interested in trying again than the woman. Nice. I was never bored with this film, not once.

DJAkin This man is so odd. He was very good in this movie. I was surprised how well he did on this strange first "date". For the most part, the entire movie was shot in some NYC apartment and it was just about these TWO characters talking to eachother in a very awkward and uncomfortable manner. The female lead in this movie was HOT and I could not believe she was attracted to the bizarre looking Tom Noonan!!! Great movie though....for me.

deanyang After the first twenty minutes of this movie, I was almost ready to turn it off. My fiancee, who was watching with me, fell asleep at about that point. I couldn't imagine that the painful and uncomfortable interactions of the two main characters on their first date could turn into anything vaguely interesting.But I was very glad that I stayed with it. Both main characters aren't what they first seem to be. It's rare to have one's perception of characters change so dramatically--yet credibly--in the course of single movie. I was intrigued, entranced, beguiled.Definitely a worthwhile rental for the thinking movie buff.