In Hector and the Search for Happiness, Simon Pegg’s travel does not broaden the mind

REVIEW: Simon Pegg’s self-help soul crusade is like Ben Stiller’s Secret Life of Walter Mitty, except he only finds crappiness, not happiness.

FOR HIT USE ONLY UNTIL OCT 24 2014 Simon Pegg in a scene from film Hector and the Search for Happiness

Hector and the Search For Happiness (M)

Director:Peter Chelsom (Hannah Montana: The Movie)

Starring:Simon Pegg, Rosamund Pike, Stellan Skarsgard, Toni Collette, Jean Reno.

Rating: *1/2

Enlightening doesn’t strike twice

Just last summer, there was The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty.

That was the movie where Ben Stiller played a buttoned-down workaholic who travels the globe to learn there is more to life than being chained to a job.

Now we have Hector and the Search For Happiness. It is pretty much exactly the same movie as that described above. Only nowhere near as good in any department you could care to mention.

Australian involvement ... Toni Collette, who has a small role as Agnes, with Simon Pegg, who plays Hector, in a scene from Hector and the Search for Happiness.

Simon Pegg has the title role, an emotionally repressed psychologist who has lost patience with his patients. Their griping, groaning and grimacing has got him down, and almost out.

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KILL ME THREE TIMES: Simon Pegg filming in Western Australia

Heads to China, the Himalayas and Kenya ... Simon Pegg as Hector in a scene from comedy adventure film Hector and the Search for Happiness.

So Hector takes off on an impromptu holiday, an open-ended break that will also serve as a fact-finding mission for his soul. Hector’s ultimate goal? To unlock the secret to everlasting happiness.

What follows is a trite traipse through far-flung locales such as China, the Himalayas and Kenya.

Mostly due to Pegg’s awkward performance — by now we know he’s a side man, not a solo leading man — Hector can be a bit of dope some of the time, and a bit of a condescending prat at all other times.

Left behind in Blighty ... Simon Pegg and Rosamund Pike, who play boyfriend and girlfriend in a scene from film Hector and the Search for Happiness.

His cutesy adventures amount to little more than a garbled statement that poor and sick people in the third world are oh-so-content with their lot in life.

Sure, the poverty and the limited life expectancy can be a drag, but it’s heaps better than being an arrogant first-world fat-cat (like the Euro-tycoon played by Stellan Skarsgard).

Not even the second-banana casting of Rosamund “Gone Girl” Pike (as the dutiful doormat Hector left behind at home) can save the movie from slipping up again and again.

Looking for happiness? Keep searching. Nothing to be found here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIM KARDASHIAN

Originally published as In Hector and the Search for Happiness, Simon Pegg’s travel does not broaden the mind