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How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 1 January 2014
This article is a review of ARE YOU HERE (a.k.a. YOU ARE HERE).
Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013. (For more information, click here.)
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“I’m not arguing with Operation Crayfish, it’s just that it’s over-funded,“ Steve Dallas (Owen Wilson) to Ben Baker (Zach Galifiankis)
YOU ARE HERE (as it was originally titled) must be on the list of most disappointing movies of 2013. It stuns that the creator of MAD MEN, Matthew Weiner, could make his feature film directing debut result in such an incoherent mess. Ideas, themes and characters are all nonsensical. His iconic TV show couldn’t be further in terms of nuance and elegance of thought.
Making its debut on the 30th anniversary of THE BIG CHILL, they share a funeral as a catalyst for soul-searching, and a self-congratulatory belief in their own (non-existent) profundity. At least THE BIG CHILL has that 1980s vacuous entertainment shared by THE BREAKFAST CLUB. More worryingly, YOU ARE HERE has echoes of other Owen Wilson mega-dud (and similarly monikered) HOW DO YOU KNOW.
YOU ARE HERE (as it was originally titled) must be on the list of most disappointing movies of 2013. It stuns that the creator of MAD MEN, Matthew Weiner, could make his feature film directing debut result in such an incoherent mess. Ideas, themes and characters are all nonsensical. His iconic TV show couldn’t be further in terms of nuance and elegance of thought.
Making its debut on the 30th anniversary of THE BIG CHILL, they share a funeral as a catalyst for soul-searching, and a self-congratulatory belief in their own (non-existent) profundity. At least THE BIG CHILL has that 1980s vacuous entertainment shared by THE BREAKFAST CLUB. More worryingly, YOU ARE HERE has echoes of other Owen Wilson mega-dud (and similarly monikered) HOW DO YOU KNOW.
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Wilson’s Steve Dallas is a jaded Chesapeake weatherman for Eyewitness News. Malaise is bone deep. Is Steve Dallas representing the everyman office drone hating their existence? Drugs and hookers and being a pervy peeping Tom is how he occupies downtime. There is no everyman in YOU ARE HERE. There is also no one to identity with. The four protagonists have the quirky/crazy dialled to maximum. Best bud Ben Baker (Zach Galifiankis) regularly gets baked. (There’s a nice time-lapse sequence as the two get stoned to classical music.) Ben says he’s writing a book on animals, humans, the machine.
At the funeral, in Aronburg, Amish country, of Ben’s dad Sam, we meet the other major players: Money-grubbing inheritance-obsessed sister Terri Baker (Amy Poehler in a thankless part), and the 77-year-old deceased’s beautiful 25-year-old widow Angelina (Laura Ramsey) – someone Steve has no problem hitting on, and the film has no problem shoehorning in some gratuitous nude shots of. Angelina becomes an ethereal, hippyish tool to make the best bud duo learn some lessons. She says things to Dallas like, “I try and avoid things that keep me from feeling.” In case you are wondering, writer-director Weiner has gone down the man-children need to grow up route. Anyone who has seen the dire THE INTERNSHIP is probably aware that Wilson unfortunately sleeps through such parts, seemingly only saving his best work for Wes Anderson. Galifiankis does not surprise as an odd bod. These four are one-note characters. One is fully aware that Don Draper and his ensemble have built up masterful portrayals over years, but such a step down in quality for Weiner is shocking. YOU ARE HERE is no mesmerising study in ambition thwarted (see instead INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS).
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Gifted the 144 acre farm (and $2.5 million to get his act together) in the will, to the unsightly chagrin of Terri receiving $350,000, Ben sees it as an opportunity to fulfil his dream of creating a utopian society. Neither sibling gives off a particular introspective note of now being parentless. Four credits from receiving an M.B.A., Ben is meant to be bright. Meant to be. Nothing in the dialogue/performance gives that impression. Did Galifiankis wander off the set of THE HANGOVER PART III and forget to modify significantly his performance?
Ben’s newfound purpose takes YOU ARE HERE in an almost unpalatable direction of pseudo-new-age gibberish. Occasional articulate dialogue and funny lines give way to a force-feeding of platitudes, such as Angelina’s “I can’t sell you on life.” My notes from the screening had the following scrawled: Lots going on but nothing going on.
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