Roos uses onscreen titles to give us characters’ backgrounds and to provide insight, such as the observation that one character “never lies.” That this character turns out, in fact, to have lied about a number of things is a reminder that neither we nor the characters should believe everything we hear. Some of our real-life friends aren’t saints, either, but we still love them. It’s not that they redeem themselves, necessarily it’s more that they grow on you and become familiar to you. Most of the people in this huge ensemble of characters are not likable at first, but only a couple of them remain so by the film’s end. Don Roos, whose caustic “The Opposite of Sex” was one of the indie highlights of 1998, returns to the scene with “Happy Endings,” a dark-undertoned comedy about unkind people manipulating each other.
