Are You Here

This movie is so good..it makes us think about the meaning of life. Owen Wilson is phenomenal. He makes me think a bit about Woody Allen. But Wilson is a bit like him, anyway. He deambulates about himself, his friend and around life, brilliantly. There are, indeed, some reminiscences of Woddy Allen's more introspective work, where he explored complicated people, relationships and inner psychology, spiced with sarcastic comedy. It's not a comedy neither is a drama. I'd call it, a realistic comedy, because our lives are totally like this. From an exterior or disconnected point of view, they are hilarious. But this movie is more accessible and contemporary. Not presumptuous. Just simple.

With a all star cast and great characters this movie doesn't deserve the hate it got. It's funny,heart warming and entertaining.

Steve Dallas (Owen Wilson) is a local TV weather reporter. He smokes weed with his slacker friend Ben Baker (Zach Galifianakis) who lives in a rundown trailer and has a philosophy of balance with nature. Ben's dad dies and Steve drives him home. Terri Coulter (Amy Poehler) is Ben's bossy sister. Angela (Laura Ramsey) is their hippie stepmother. Terri is given $350k and the rest of the property totaling some $2.5 million to Ben. It puts Ben into a tailspin until he comes up with an idea. Then Terri challenges the Will.

The material keeps trying and certainly Zach gives it his all. This is simply not funny. Writer/director Matthew Weiner is famous for some terrific TV work. Most of this falls flat. It's hard to put a finger on a single cause of this. The jokes are not sharp enough. The directions aren't there. There is something off about the chemistry between Owen, Zach and Angela. Owen is playing a ladies man but the movie starts with him being a horrible date. These weed smoking characters are not nearly funny enough. The four main characters just make me scratch my head. Amy Poehler is almost funny a couple of time. Laura Ramsey struggles to stay in the picture with her costars. Owen has a great moment about his friendship and then the movie turns it on his head. Just when this movie seems to climb out of a hole, it digs an even deeper one. With the talents in the picture, this should be so much funnier.

I don't recall ever hearing about this movie. Perhaps it was too steeped in 60's attitude for today's audiences. If so that is truly a shame because that probably means today's young people are too far removed from the era to understand it well. In today's world that is a great loss. If we could live as hippies attempted to back then, we'd be far closer to mitigating climate change than we are now and a large part of that lifestyle was the attitude. This movie captures that attitude beautifully.

Laura Ramsey as Angela, the young hippie step-mother, brought back memories for me about women who actually existed in those years, who would float through life elevating everyone around them like some magical earthbound angel. I suppose nowadays she seems implausible. But back then she was very possible and meeting someone like her was unforgettable. Ms Ramsey's depiction captures the type in a way I haven't seen done in a very long time. It was a pleasure to reacquaint myself with the woman she represents. In a lot of ways those flower children were more affecting than anyone I've met since.

The idea of the film apparently is to bring some of that ethos into the present. The two main leads, Owen Wilson and Zach Galifianakis, have no problem evoking the era and they do a splendid job. I thought both brought the right mix of humor and pathology to their parts. They seemed to understand what the movie was trying to convey, and they were quite successful for people like me. What's surprising is that younger people apparently don't get it and I don't quite understand why they wouldn't.

Amy Poehler is also in the movie but in an unattractive role. I still appreciated her contribution to the mix in what seemed like a risky departure from her usual performance.

The story revolves around two friends, pretty much drifting through life who end up supporting each other through the trauma of having one's well-off father die. That death spurs them both to grow up a bit though the transition is not easy for them. The movie is set in farm country where Amish live and coincidentally I live in that sort of country myself. It was actually a bit of a treat to see them carry on in such a setting.

I enjoyed the movie very much, understand its point completely and am really bummed to find out that very few others enjoyed it. I would recommend it to anyone familiar with that era (it's actually set in the present) and not hostile to it. Believe me from my point of view it is far more your loss than mine that this movie wasn't as praised as it should have been.

I found this movie leaving a bad taste in my mouth... It started out as a typical 'Zach stoned out of his mind funny' type of thing, and turned into it trying to teach me something about mental illness, but doing it in the poorest way possible.

Also, just a side note, I think it is the first time I have ever seen Owen Wilson pick up a stoner role. That's just me. I found it weird watching him smoke up on the couch watching cartoons.

It was amusing for the first while, but it ended with a 'what the hell did I just watch' feeling.

They introduced mental illness into the story line, a reason for Zach being nuts, and they solved it basically by getting him to shave his beard off. Now, I understand that that shows a drastic change, but they didn't follow it with anything.. Just watch it, it'll make you mad as well.

Overall, not really worth the two hours unless you have nothing better to watch. Or if you absolutely love Zach (however you spell his last name) or Owen Wilson, and are dedicated to watching everything they put out.