The star pairing of “Happy Hours” isn’t just its selling point, but its audience filter. If the words “Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson together again” make your heart go a little soft, then congratulations: This equally soft-hearted romantic comedy has been made directly for you. If, however, you’re unmoved by the prospect of a “Dawson’s Creek” reunion — or young enough not to know what that means — then feel free to walk on by: While perfectly innocuous, Holmes’ latest outing as a writer-director has nothing especially novel to offer viewers with no great attachment to its once-involved leads.
The good news is that, as former teenage lovers brought together by chance in middle age, Holmes and Jackson are as personable now as they were back then; on the other hand, Holmes’ script, a plot-light affair that rides heavily on the metatextual nature of its casting, doesn’t ask much more of them than that. Alternating tonally between tidy commercial romcom tropes and the shaggier walking-and-talking of Richard Linklater’s “Before” films, “Happy Hours” hasn’t the depth or breadth of dialogue required to sustain the latter approach — though it’s been mooted as the first in a trilogy revolving around these characters, we’re not left eager to learn that much more about them.
