On the face of it, “Happy and You Know It” begins with the least successful sitdown interviews committed to film, at least to go by a strict definition. Of course with “Hail Satan” director Penny Lane behind the camera, there’s a lot more going on in the scene than getting toddlers to stay still long enough to be interviewed in her winning film about contemporary children’s music. There’s the obvious and undeniable observation that they are simply too cute for words, but she puts a far more complex idea into play as she looks on the fickle tots as they stomp around with the musical instruments they’re handed, giving no clues away as to what they’re actually thinking and leaving the space to wonder what it actually takes to reach them.
Ironically, sitdown interviews have become a real strength of Lane’s work and “Happy and You Know It” honors a relatively underappreciated profession by taking the craft required to pen a song that’ll catch on with kids seriously, affording a host of musicians who work in the genre – Anthony Field of The Wiggles, Laurie Berkner, Divinity Roxx, Johnny Only and Caspar Babypants (aka Chris Ballew) – a chance to show the the energy and effort that they see as an investment in the future when they hope their own creativity becomes infectious. Most of them started out in rock bands and in discussing melodic phrasing, they insist the work required isn’t any different. If anything, it’s more demanding when it comes to keeping up with the kids’ energy for live performances. (As Ballew, who once was the frontman for the Presidents of the United States of America jokes, the frisky audiences are the kind “you’d find at a Fugazi show and pay $5 to go away.”)
However, there’s a searching quality that’s become a greater part of the presentation of Lane’s interviews over the years where subjects really do arrive at answers rather than give them, allowing uncertainty about themselves or their practice. That proves especially compelling in “Happy and You Know It” when amidst all the bouncy earworms that threaten to be stuck in your noggin forever, the film offers a thoughtful reprieve in calm reflection from the musicians who don’t only speak to their art but the corresponding career considerations as all involved may be successful in ways that don’t adhere to the milestones they might’ve imagined for themselves when starting out in clubs and dive bars and also work in a medium where the repetition of lyrics make it ripe for AI appropriation and pollution, creating an uncertain future in other ways. (Tracking the evolution of “Baby Shark,” a onetime campfire staple brought to mainstream popularity by Only to become a heavily synthesized smash hit from the Korean content farm Pinkfong on YouTube comes to serve as a grim cautionary tale.)
“Happy and You Know It” never needs to spell out that humans will always be more interesting when Lane is so careful to show everyone in front of the camera in all their dimension. Even the cultural critics on hand such as Rob Harvilla and Willa Paskin aren’t just there to talk about the music, but about seeing it through the prism of becoming parents themselves, and when the job of nurturing such complicated creatures in their most formative years falls on these musicians, the work itself couldn’t seem any more difficult or honorable when everyone treats it with real responsibility. But the film becomes tremendously moving beyond inspiring the urge to dance as the musicians speak of finding their passion – and losing it as well – the adults become somewhat indistinguishable from their audience in terms of articulating what they want. Joy is identified as an abstract and mysterious thing and difficult to get a hold on no matter what age you are, but in “Happy and You Know It,” there’s surely plenty of it here.
“Happy and You Know It” will air on HBO on December 25th and available on HBO Max thereafter.