"A beautiful film of ravishing power and remarkable performances." Scott Foundas, Variety.
{The only blurb on the box is from a Variety critic? They couldn't even get a quote from Rolling Stone's Peter "I've-never-met-a-film-about-which-
I-couldn't-write-at-least-one-sentence-ladened-with-superlatives" Travers? Not promising.}
Written and directed by Michael Almereyda {excellent! I think Nadja was fun and inventive and his Hamlet was brilliant}, this high-tech thriller {uh-oh} stars David Arquette (The Scream Trilogy) {eh}, Ally Sheedy (The Breakfast Club) {20+ years ago!} Gloria Reuben (TV's "ER") {like her, she's solid} Liane Balaban (New Waterford Girl) {don't know her, but I once worked with a woman who had the same last name and she was a distant relative of Bob Balaban, wonder if they're related?} and Clarence Williams III (The General's Daughter). {C'mon, if you're going to mention The Breakfast Club, how about citing Purple Rain, or better still "The Mod Squad"!}
When Muriel (Shalom Harlow, Vanilla Sky) {Yowza! I could stare at her for 90 minutes, that's a plus} suddenly vanishes {oh no, like in the first 10 minutes? that's a minus}, her 16-year-old sister Amelia (Balaban) sets out to find her. Joining in her search, a burned-out, ex-CIA agent Bill (Williams) {so it's a buddy picture, the kind where they are both very different but come to appreciate and rely on each other in the final reel?} uncovers fragments of online chats with a soft-core pornographer, Eddie (Arquette), on Muriel's computer {I don't mean to tell you how to do your job, Copywriter Person, but it might be more accurate to call it a cyber thriller and, by the way, this sounds familiar, and I don't mean what's going on between me and my FB stalker, either}. Following a twisted trail that takes them from a seedy pirate radio station {huh?} to Eddie's underground studio, Amelia and Bill close in on the shocking truth {oh no, the "shocking truth" is usually neither, except for the original version of The Vanishing, that was shocking and believable, if not truthful!} behind Muriel's disappearance.
The film is called Happy Here and Now. I checked it out the library because of Michael Almereyda, and I watched it in two sittings and it's a mess. Gloria Reuben wears a white patch over one eye throughout, and this is explained when we first see her but it has nothing to do with the narrative or her character or anything else. I think it's just supposed to be weird. If this were a David Lynch film (and it's trying, albeit in a watered-down way, to be a David Lynch film), we wouldn't have that explanation and I'd be happy accepting the mystery of it. Here, it's just nonsensical. So it is with the rest of the film. The only thing missing from this film is a Little Person dressed as Napoleon riding a Shetland pony. For the record, there is a shot of a non-Little Person dressed as Napoleon. He's not riding a pony, though.
