Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman is a very short documentary by an artist that I am completely unfamiliar with, Mickalene Thomas. I was very interested in the documentary because a black woman was the subject and the filmmaker, which does not happen often. Apparently she used her mother as her muse. If a documentary is great, I can suddenly become knowledgeable and a fan of something or someone that I knew nothing about before it started. Unfortunately, this personal documentary may have suffered because of Thomas’ deep adoration of her mother, which is conveyed, but all too briefly to be more than a sketch of a woman who overcame a lot of struggles except her final one. Thomas may be too close to her subject to present her to a stranger and /or reveal her importance to her work. Wanted to love it, but only a must see for those familiar with Thomas’ work.