Here today
Running time: 117 minutes. Rated PG-13 (strong language and sexual references). In theaters.
“Here Today” may be one-half a phrase (“… gone tomorrow”), but it’s about 19 different movies.
One is a backstage showbiz comedy. Billy Crystal plays Charlie Berns, a renowned writer of TV, films and Broadway plays whose heyday was in the 1970s and ’80s. Now, he’s a respected old fogey with a gig writing for a cable sketch show called “This Just In.” It airs on the “Funny Channel” — a misnomer if there ever was one.
No wonder the overlong movie directed by Crystal doesn’t get laughs, because “Here Today” is also a dementia drama. Charlie has kept his worsening condition a secret from his colleagues and two adult children (Laura Benanti and Penn Badgley), even as he struggles to remember their names.
Had enough? Too bad. The film then warps into a modern “Tell-Tale Heart,” as a traumatic memory from decades earlier haunts Charlie, and he can’t shake the guilt.
With so much already going on, somehow Crystal’s co-star is Tiffany Haddish as a loud-and-proud New York lounge singer named Emma. The actress does her broad “Girls Trip” shtick plus a wallop of sap with a PG-13 vocabulary. Even with those adjustments, her oversize style butts heads with Crystal’s 1992 set-’em-up-knock-’em-down delivery.
This “Hoarders” house of ideas is also about fatherhood, mentorship, marriage, New York and age discrimination, and features a cameo appearance by Sharon Stone.
Movies are allowed to be more than one thing — “Terminator” has robo killings and romance — but all those qualities must harmonize. “Here Today” is a mess.
Beyond being unwieldy, Crystal’s film is just plain hard to believe. The curse of making a film about comedians and comedy writers is they have to be funny enough that an audience buys that they actually make a living telling jokes. The gags on “This Just In” are all duds.
Equally brow-raising is the Tinder date Charlie goes on with Emma that leads to an oddball friendship. The movie wants us to think that a romance might bloom eventually, but that’s about as likely as a palm tree popping up in Siberia.
Crystal, for what it’s worth, stays genuine through the increasingly viscous plot. He still has that warmth beneath his zingers that you don’t find in the frigid comedians of today. Nonetheless, we resent his movie’s aggressive efforts to force us into crying with strained, untruthful moments by the bucketful.
Charlie encourages the writers of “This Just In” to earn their laughs without resorting to lowbrow humor. The lesson for Crystal and co-writer Alan Zweibel is you also gotta earn tears.
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