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| Happy Here and Now (2002) |
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| Release Date
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2002 |
| Rating
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R |
| Duration
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89 min |
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Overwiew :A young woman named Amelia (Liane Balaban) comes to New Orleans in search of her missing sister, Muriel (Shalom Harlow). She stays with her distracted aunt Lois (Ally Sheedy) and young niece (Josephine Martin). With the help of Lois's neighbor, a run-down, retired private-eye named Bill (Clarence Williams III), Amelia focuses on the only clue to Muriel's disappearance: a computer with its hard drive wiped out. With Bill's help, Amelia makes contact with a drawling, philosophically-inclined young man calling himself Eddie Mars--a man reachable only in the disembodied realm of Cyberspace. It's evident that Eddie Mars has had some contact with the missing woman, but the nature of their relationship is unclear. As Amelia tries to track down Eddie, other New Orleanians enter the picture: a termite control expert (David Arquette) holed up in a tented house; his brother, Tom, an accident-prone fireman (Karl Geary); and a recently widowed music teacher, Hannah (Gloria Reuben). There's also a trio of squatters (Isabel Gillies, Nic Ratner and Quintron) who had been living with Muriel, and local R&B legend Ernie K-Doe, presiding over his Mother-in-Law Lounge. The story hinges on an around-the-corner sci-fi premise, involving a computer technology that allows people to project alternate identities over the Internet. The movie's dreamlike aspect emerges from real people and places. As various characters cross paths, a larger story takes shape-a chronicle of isolated souls searching for connection in a contemporary wilderness. |
Starring :
Liane Balaban, David Arquette, Ally Sheedy, Shalom Harlow, Gloria Reuben
Directors :
Michael Almereyda
Producers :
Jonathan Sehring, Caroline Kaplan, Holly Becker
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 Critic Reviews
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www.newsday.com - : Mourning and gloom weigh upon most of the characters in Michael Almereyda's convoluted and numbingly pretentious ''Happy Here and Now,'' which revolves around a woman named Amelia (a glum Liane Balaban), who comes down to a pre-Katrina New Orleans to search for her missing sister. She is aided in her search by a poker-faced retired private eye (Clarence Williams III), who finds some clues in the lost sister's on-camera Internet conversations with a mysterious philosophizing cowboy (Karl Geary). more...
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www.filethirteen.com - : I wasn’t happy here and now when watching this turkey. I was Bored in the Movie Theater. I guess bored may not be the proper term. For much of the film I was at least interested to see how in the fuck all this random stuff was going to come together. When It didn’t, I was “Disappointed in the Movie Theater.'' more...
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www.filmthreat.com - : “I think of life as dust or wind,” says pretty young Muriel (Shalom Harlow) at the outset of “Happy Here and Now.” Hmm, I wonder...didn’t Kansas say that in song, so very tunefully, about 25 years ago? Such musings are about the only enjoyment to be gleaned from writer-director Michael Almereyda’s ponderous new experimental something or other. After a promising start with the vampire tale “Nadja” and his Gen-X update of “Hamlet,” Almereyda is tripped up by this grab at cosmic profundity, and lands in a sticky puddle of pretension. more...
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