A Screwball Comedy of Mistaken Identity
Happy, Texas is a screwball comedy of mistaken identity set in motion when escaped convicts Harry Sawyer (Jeremy Northam) and Wayne Wayne Wayne Jr. (Steve Zahn) steal an RV that turns out to belong to a gay couple who work as itinerant beauty pageant consultants. When the RV breaks down just outside of Happy and Sheriff Chappy Dent (William H. Macy) escorts the cons into town, the townspeople assume Harry and Wayne are Steven and David, the would-be saviors of the Little Miss Fresh-Squeezed pre-teen pageant. Seeing an opportunity to rob the bank if they stick around, the two decide to go along with the masquerade. Complications ensue when charming, handsome Harry becomes a love object for both Sheriff Dent and bank president Jo (Ally Walker). Not only that, Wayne discovers that he just might have the chops when it comes to training pre-pubescent girls in the fine art of pageantry.

At only 98 minutes, Happy, Texas feels long. There just isn't enough comedy to completely sustain it, and the subplot involving Harry and Jo keeps threatening to derail the film into a more conventional romance. Still, Happy has its sunnier moments, many of them involving Zahn, who is raucously funny as the clueless Wayne. The scenes where he flails about the room — a pratfall in motion as he teaches his young charges their routines — are hysterical. Equally satisfying, in a more low-key way, is the budding romance between Dent and Harry. Macy is downright touching in his bashful desire as the lovelorn lawman. In one of the film's best scenes, Dent leads an uncomfortable Harry around on the dance floor and both Dent and the audience are rewarded when Harry suddenly relaxes and joins in the spirit of the dance.

Collector's Edition Highlighted by Deleted Scenes and a Filmmaker Interview
Miramax presents Happy, Texas in a pristine anamorphic widescreen transfer in the film's original 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio with an excellent Dolby 2.0 Surround Sound track. A French language track and Spanish subtitles are also included on the disc.

The disc contains two music videos — Shannon Brown's "Half a Man" and Pam Tillis' "After a Kiss." Both are strictly filler that will appease only the singers' fans. A seven-and-a-half minute featurette, Making Happy, Texas, includes interviews with the cast, Stone, and Illsley. While this is little more than the typical promotional video, it does sustain interest, if only for the insight it offers into the both the pleasures and pains of experienced actors working with a tyro director. While Northam asserts that making Happy was "one of the best experiences of my life," Macy laughingly recalls having to tell Illsley to "get a SAG card or shut up" when he felt Illsley was overdirecting.

The main bonuses on the disc are 17 minutes of deleted scenes that can be viewed with or without Illsley's audio commentary, a 15-minute interview with Illsley and Stone, and Illsley and Stone's audio commentary. In this instance, viewing the deleted scenes is an absolute must. The Happy, Texas shown at Sundance and the film that eventually opened in theaters are two completely different products and the differences can be found here. As problematic as the Harry/Jo romance is in the final release version, it was a downright dour subplot in the original version. Most of Ally Walker's scenes were re-shot after Sundance, as was the film's opening. While it certainly would have been more interesting to view both versions of the film side by side, by including these scenes, Miramax at least gives the viewer some indication that the sale of a film to a distributor is not necessarily a filmmaker's final hurdle.

In both the audio commentary and the interview, Stone and Illsley come across as a couple of nice guys who had a dream and the tenacity to fulfill it. Their audio commentary is nothing much, a couple of old friends talking about what fun they had making a movie. They're both quick to point out the limits of their budget — how they had to shake the RV to make it appear as if it were moving or how many times the same extras will appear in the same scene wearing different costumes — but that's nothing new. The shorter interview is better in that it is all about how they came to make the film in the first place, how many years it took to get from script to screen, and what steps they had to take to get there. This is a heartening interview for anyone contemplating a leap into indie film production. Come on, get happy.