Happy Here and Now

I picked this movie because of the blurb on the back of it. I love New Orleans and IFC. The reason I picked the movie though was never addressed. The cast of characters was cool but the stories were so disjointed. After suffering through 90 minutes of a film that started out making sense,well sort of, it made absolutely no sense at the end. By the way, that is 90 minutes of my life that I would like to ask the director to send back to me as soon as possible. I could use them watching a better film. No one had anything to do with nothing in that movie. I have read other reviews and I ask myself what planet was I watching the movie on. I strongly suggest imbibing in a mind altering substance before watching then it may make sense, maybe.

Now let me clarify that I love art films. I love abstract ideas. I love seeing and hearing things on screen that make me go,"Wha????, and then go "oohhhh...i get it." But this is no Godard. This film, well, I just don't know. Is it in art film? Is it an excuse to display the gritty, third-world beauty of New Orleans, and the array of characters that lie within? Or is it a low-budget independent film that juggles from one concept to the other, never bothering to connect the dots because, well hell, there wasn't really a solid script in the first place, and never a real purpose to the story(how's that for a run-on sentence)? i guess my problem with this film is that, though it may have been low-budget, they still spent a a good deal on its production and actors, but didn't bother making an actual story with what they had. I was intrigued by the film and the ideas it was portraying. And if the whole film would have been as beautifully-abstract as the final dream sequence, or even the beginning (the music score, by David Julyan is great!), I would have wept--in a good way--like a child. I saw this at the New Orleans film fest in a packed house of audience members happy enough to see people and places they recognized: Ernie K. Doe, Bud's Broiler, etc. But perhaps they loved it...who knows?

The ideas, talent, and potential are there for a good film. But as a whole, the film makes you go, "hmmmmm....interesting....NEXT PLEASE!"

Just subtle enough to be very interesting. You have to work for this one -- and I'm not completely sure I really got it. It's like a long alcohol soaked night in New Orleans: reality fades and the line between living and dreaming evaporates. Clever in concept, it pushes you to grow: it nurtures you. Like a gardener nurtures the flora, pinching off a leaf here and hacking off a branch there. What a trip to see Clarence Williams III in this thing doing an outstanding job! But hang on to your hat: the music is gonna grab you and rattle you like a bag of bones. It is Killer. I think I've walked every one of the locations used and I want to go back to NOLA to sweat and stagger again. Yep; this one's going to haunt me for awhile. Thank you David Arquette.

There is great potential in the premise and some of the characters, but no commitment to an engrossing story. The main character is as flacid as one comes, and it's mostly not the actress's fault. There is no delivery of any coherent message in each of the subplots that is taped together with scotch tape (no offense to 3M), And any direction each story goes in ends up in not only a dead end but a colorless, bland cosmos.

Not recommended for even those who go to movies to hallucinate. Unless you need some extra sleep. - A sleeper, in the literal sense.

Mysterious, elliptical film that at first I didn't know what to make of, but I found it really lingered in the mind afterwards and was ultimately one of the most memorable films I saw at the 2002 Toronto International film festival; a really unique play between the real and the imiation of the real and the blurring between them. Funny, strange, affecting; I didn't understand all of it, but I liked it.