Happy Here and Now (2002)
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Karl Geary, Shalom Harlow, Ally Sheedy, Gloria Reuben, Clarence Williams
DVD Info
Release:
Jan 31, 2006
DVD Features:
- Anamorphic - 1.85
Audio:
- Dolby Digital 5.1 - English
- Subtitles - English - Closed Captioning
Buy It On DVD
Reviews
The film is resolutely committed to its affectations of deepness and meaningfulness, but all it imparts is a sense of tediousness.
Casts an undeniable and lingering spell for those who enjoy their cinema spiked with adventure and philosophy.
The future is quieter, emotionally subdued and grayly mysterious, at least in the small hop forward imagined by filmmaker Michael Almereyda.
Even if you're not quite down with Almereyda's digital-age existentialism, he has impeccable taste in music.
This is a droll, laid-back film noir steeped in Crescent City atmosphere and music that culminates in the colliding worlds of genuine and virtual reality.
Michael Almereyda's muddled Happy Here and Now should have stayed on the shelf -- where it's been gathering dust for several years.
Michael Almereyda's futuristic mystery isn't a complete misfire, but it does leave you with the same baffled blankness that suffuses his isolated, techno-dependent characters.
Mourning and gloom weigh upon most of the characters in Michael Almereyda's convoluted and numbingly pretentious Happy Here and Now
This small masterpiece has been one of the best films around not to secure a proper theatrical release.
Set in New Orleans, this collection of loosely connected set pieces was written and directed by Michael Almereyda, who is perhaps best known for his 2000 iteration of Hamlet.
The dialogue is much like a bull session in a college dorm room, right before the munchies set in.
When Amelia takes the full multimedia plunge in the movie's final moments, Happy becomes something inexplicably (and metaphysically) beautiful.
A rich kaleidoscope of sights and sounds that sing out in their vitality.
Almereyda is tripped up by this grab at cosmic profundity, and lands in a sticky puddle of pretension.
To make an inexact analogy, 'Happy Here and Now' is to New Orleans as 'Mystery Train' was to Memphis...
While technically brilliant and gorgeous to watch, Happy Here and Now feels as unfocused and uneven as it is ambitious and intellectually frustrating.
The film transcends what occasionally seems to be oddness for its own sake.
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by: Chippor Snippet 3/5/05


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