Are You Here
DIRECTOR: Matthew Weiner
CAST: Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Poehler, Laura Ramsey
CLASSIFICATION: 13 LSD
RUNNING TIME: 114 minutes
RATING: **
It’s understandable that for his first stab at feature film-making, Matthew Weiner might want to explore territory far from that of his brilliant TV drama, Mad Men. But it’s disappointing that he couldn’t come up with anything better than the tired bromance refugees played by Wilson and Galifianakis in Are You Here. While it aims to explore the crooked path to male self-knowledge and a more harmonious place in the world, this tonal mess rarely puts a foot right as comedy.
Not to harp on the Mad Men comparison, but it’s puzzling how a writer with such compelling insights into the complexities of human behaviour and relationships could think this wishy-washy dramedy had anything interesting to say.
A serial dater with a permanently maxed-out credit card, Steve (Wilson) habitually turns up late and stoned for his weatherman job at a news channel, making inappropriate comments on air. No laughs so far. His best buddy Ben (Galifianakis) is a paranoid bipolar semi-recluse living in a cabin off the grid, where he rants about environmental disaster and world chaos while occasionally scribbling away at his visionary book.
The suspicion arises that Weiner knows this setup plays like something lifted from a script pile of ’80s buddy comedies.
When Ben’s father dies, Steve accompanies him to his rural childhood home. The farmhouse is occupied by his dad’s widow, Angela (Ramsey), a barefoot 25-year-old hippie.
Amy Poehler is too gifted a comedic actor not to yield funny moments, but Ben’s controlling married sister Terry is a role she’s played before in countless better variations. Terry braces to battle Angela over the estate. But instead it emerges that their father left the house, the farm, the general-store business and $2.5 million in assets to Ben in the hope that he’ll get his life together.
That windfall prompts both euphoria and anxiety for Ben, who wants to turn the farm into a utopian community. Steve just sees it as a way to bankroll a life of bong hits and babes, encouraging Angela to stick around and keep an eye on his unstable buddy.
It’s hard to invest in the predictable conflicts that arise for characters as poorly drawn as these. The actor who comes off best from this bundle of undercooked humour is Galifianakis. Forced to take stock and act on his problems, Ben grows in ways that provides the movie with some much-needed heart.
Steve, on the other hand, makes an entirely rote and unconvincing transition as a douche of a guy confronting the emptiness of his life.
Back to Mad Men again, that show’s position in the pop-cultural consciousness is partly due to the meticulous attention to detail that goes into its visual aesthetic. It superbly manipulates mood to train shafts of light on often opaque characters. Despite recruitment of key collaborators from the drama, Are You Here looks completely generic and lurches from scene to scene with neither flow nor a cohesive tone. – Hollywood Reporter
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