"mr. happy": a Colin Tiley short, starring Chance the Rapper

Henry Savage
Mar 23, 2015
2 min read

Chance the Rapper (Chanelor Bennett) is everywhere. He's featuring on Action Bronson's new album that is being tweeted about by Complex and XXL every 2 second, a song with Madonna & Mike Tyson called "Iconic", and has started the ball rolling with his band's The Social Experiment's new album Surf, featuring Donnie Trumpet. However, in late March 2015 in the midst of the music year's progression, Chance comes out starring in a film, what bliss.

The movie stars Chancelor as, Victor Bennett, a severely depressed, agitated soul who seems to barely have an identity or $125 to his worth. Victor presses through life in an auto-pilot like manner, as his ex-girlfriend is getting pool-fucked by her new, rich boyfriend and his boss, a drug crazed idiot who asks Victor to tag along with him to nightclubs nightly. Bennett declines per usual.

The film opens with Tiley's depiction of suicide by suffocation, acted vividly by the young Chicago rapper using a large plastic bag held tightly over his face. You can see Chance struggle for breath as he tries to pass into unconciousness and be swallowed by death, but soon rips the bag off his face and lies in exhaustion and self-pity.

Throughout the film, Bennett uses a very old computer and a 15 year old outdated version of Microsoft, which poses at first he might be in the early 90's, however soon the young Bennett is surrounded by a modern Californian landscape and his fashion along with his young aquaintenance reflects a current trend. However, I wish the Tiley would have depicted the story in the 90's or 80's, something that could take an audience back. Today a lot of viewers are out of contact with other decades, centuries, even ages and it's crucial to try illustrate experiences from past times to allow those times to still live now (the most recent example of this is Inherent Vice). I would liked to have seen a setting in Southern California, but in 1992.

Nonetheless, the movie shows Victor struggle with his decision and meet a new blossoming love along the way.

The ending is beautiful, and this film's message which includes (in my opinion):

- You're promised death when you are born, there's no need to end it yourself

- Your ability to find your own happiness, may not be so far out of your reach

- Act wisely, because you might actually get what you wish for

Which in Victor Bennett's case is his own death.

The Colin Tiley piece, "mr. happy" emphasizing the small things in life that make us want to live and drive us to keep doing what we do, is refreshing for this dull millenium.

"BE YO-SELF"

Find out for yourself in the video above ~