This certainly reminds me of the Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Eat, Pray, Love and other films of that type.
This is, of course, a red herring, if you will, as Hector is looking for a way to find out if he can truly be happy with his life. I'm sure the film had its intentions in the right place, it wants to tell a sweet and beautiful story about a man learning what makes people happy in order to become a better psychiatrist. But even one of the most talented comedic actors around cannot work miracles. And I think that that's the case with this movie as well. Simon Pegg is one of the few people I can pretty much watch anything with and he'd improve it just by being in the film. Ming Zhao (and her waterfall of hair) is riveting as Ying Li, Hector's one-night-one-day-stand, and it's a pity that there doesn't seem to be more substantive projects in development on her IMDb page.
Simon Pegg is absolutely darling as the mild-mannered though emotionally courageous Hector, and Rosamund Pike plays his put-upon yet supportive girlfriend with her trademark icy gutsiness. The little details are just marvelous: the Tintin parallels, Hector half-closing his eyes to match his botched passport photo, the papier-mache plane turbulence, Hector's perpetual lack of writing utensils figuring into his emancipation, and Clara's neuroticisms, "Is this conversation going as badly/well as I think it is?" The happy moments are indeed uplifting as hell, but Hector's unexpected imprisonment in a third world prison is truly harrowing and suspenseful. So flippin' awesome! A stuck-in-a-rut psychiatrist is losing patience with his patients and finds that the problem is himself, so he embarks on a world tour to find the secret to happiness.with some selfish self-actualization along the way.
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