When it comes to idols, it can become a little difficult to be a bias party in reviewing their work. Billy Crystal is such a man for me, and yet I am faced unfortunately with the task of having no bias effect me at all in the case of his latest directorial effort Here Today. For Here Today really is a 5/10, as standard as they come. Straight down the line, with enough good performances and witty banter to not stray below a 5, but nowhere near enough genuine emotion or loss of cliché to go above a 5. Sorry Billy, but that’s the gist, this time around anyway.
It’s the whacky sort of tale we’ve seen before, an older lovable comedian type grows friends with a younger and kookier individual as they cross paths unexpectedly and affect each others life’s forever. It’s standard, but it works. Here there’s a more dramatic angle with the introduction rather early on of the fact that Crystal’s character is suffering in the early stages of a form of dementia, which is of course affecting his life and mind more and more as every days goes by. Estranged from his family he finds a carer and companion in Tiffany Haddish following a chance encounter regarding an auctioned meal and an unfortunately allergy inducing shellfish lunch. Crystal and Haddish of course have more charisma and boundless talent than many in this world and so when they’re on screen one can’t help but fall in love with them, laugh with them and naturally feel great empathy for them. However ultimately this friendship and the roots it takes just all feels very overly sentimental and cliché ridden. The wit of Crystal, in the writing (with Alan Zweibel, who also the short story the film is based upon) and performance is similarly boundless, but as the film goes on we enter a bizarrely unnatural liminal space where we don’t really know anymore whether we’re laughing with or at Crystal’s Charlie Burnz. One specific later Network inspired sequence is frankly one of the most misjudged and ill-toned pieces of film I’ve seen in some time.
As the film unfolds and the comedy begins to dissipate more frequently, as we spend more and more time with the illness, the film does grow into a pretty tired soppy formula. When it comes to the final section of the film, one can hardly believe to what extent we have grown overly soppy and saccharin. By the time Haddish is performing Bob Dylan’s masterful You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go we are really past it. Then it’s an image of a family watching a setting sun and we’re more than past the point of no return. I’m a sentimental guy, but sometimes the credulity of such montages and sequences can grow rather weary. In the case of Here Today it’s overly wearisome and in trying so hard to get an emotional punch out of its audience, it loses them completely, or at least lost me.
A very standard 5/10, as aforementioned. When Here Today is funny, it gets smiles. When Here Today is sad, it’s a little too saccharin to get tears. Overall Here Today is a very average film with incredible talent at every single turn, even in the smallest parts and the tiniest cameos. However when it comes to pacing, plotting and a general tone, Here Today falters. I also just saw that the run-time was only 93 minutes, when I genuinely thought it was 2hrs and 10mins. I am amazed to what extent that last sentence was not a joke at all. Yeah, I guess that tells you everything.
P.S. Come to think of it I don’t think Billy’s directed a really great film ever. Everyone of the four just seems to fall into this middling ‘not terrible, but not great’ group. But again, does that mean that the man isn’t one of my greatest inspirations in life and comedy, hell no. He was, is and always will be. A legend through and through. Love you Billy.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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