Billy Crystal is one of those hapless gents you can’t help but love. His reeking self-apology immediately makes a person want to like him just to stop his emotional bleeding.
In his latest film which he directed and co-wrote with Alan Zweibel, “Here Today” is a well meaning attempt to grapple with the sticky situation of Alzheimer’s. As anyone who has researched the affliction knows, people can sometimes be lucid and functional and then suddenly fall into a black hole of incapacitation. And Billy with Alan’s short story as a start nails this perfectly.
But then there’s the tricky situation of how to do flashbacks…which now we all know, having a one sided flashback (the love of Billy’s life is seen talking into the camera as if the camera is Billy in several lengthy scenes) does NOT work. Overlaying schmaltzy string music only makes this worse. Rarely do I cringe in a non-violent movie, but the third time Louise Krause appears on screen, I literally wanted to scream out “NO! Please not again!”. A script doctor would have gently persuaded Billy to either hire a younger actor to portray him or simply show photographs in a scrapbook.
I’m impassioned about this as I truly believe Here Today could have been the “Marriage Story” of dementia, moving, not a false note, but instead we’re left with a movie like the disease itself, possessing beautifully lucid moments of ageism, the horrific pain of getting old and losing memory mixed with horrendous scenes (and I LOVE Tiffany Haddish as a comedian but she is no singer and not a dramatic actress either) that seemed straight out of a Hallmark movie.
One last positive, the crew of actors and actresses in the SNL-ish show Billy’s character writes for, were talented actors. Billy’s ‘family’, on the other hand, should seek out other professions.
Here Today: Good Attempt & Concept, But…
