Happy Here and Now
Happy Here and Now
| 08 June 2002 (USA)
Happy Here and Now Trailers

When her sister suddenly vanishes, a young girl sets out to find her, desperately searching the internet for clues. Joining her is an ex-CIA agent, who uncovers fragments of online chats the missing girl had with a softcore pornographer.

Reviews
WasAnnon

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

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SoTrumpBelieve

Must See Movie...

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Dotsthavesp

I wanted to but couldn't!

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Verity Robins

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

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jazzding-1

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.

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Scoats

This movie seems to do a great job capturing what was like to live in NOLA pre-K. The John Travolta NOLA movie was similarly as effective. This movie runs along crisply enough but comes to series of dead ends. It presents itself as a mystery but eventually gives up on that. The Internet Chatroom technology is quite unbelievable (too flawlessly fluid for a realistic avatar) but was easily overlooked since the movie was holding my interest otherwise. The various stories are all at least a little interesting and do all intersect in the ending "climax". The ending I guess made sense to the director and/or editor, but left me very unsatisfied. This is a movie that could have used some more work with the script before filming.

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lazur-2

The scenes of New Orleans have taken on a greater importance since the Katrina disaster. Some people will only know N.O. from this movie. (Unfortunately, most people will never see the movie, either.) Real-life characters, clubs, and music make this worthwhile for anyone's viewing at least once. Dialog on esoteric matters resembles 'Slackers'. I enjoyed that a science fiction perspective was required for the relationships to exist, while the vibe of the film is otherwise very neighborhood-low-tech. The problem is that I was fooled into thinking that the accompanying plot mattered, only to be left hanging at the end. Very enjoyable , piece by piece. This would have been a much better film if they had either 1/ tightened up the plot a little, or 2/loosened it enough so that lack of a real resolution wasn't required. .

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mistabol

As a native of New Orleans, when I heard that a movie was being made here that would involve (singer) Ernie K-Doe, my inner monologue was one protracted groan. We are used to having Hollywood portray the city along familiar lines -- lots of gumbo, voodoo and Mardi Gras as a daily occurrence, and maybe a black guy in a cowboy hat as a member of law enforcement. The Big Easy is a perfect example of such a cliche-peppered representation.I put it together a few days later that the director was the director of Nadja, one of my favorite vampire movies, so I thought, well, maybe this guy will get it.And get it he did, getting down with the superamazing and description-defying Ernie K-Doe, sort of the Muhammad Ali of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues. His club, the Mother-in-Law Lounge, served until his death as sort of a pagan night church that improbably brought Orleanians of widely varying stripes together to backchorus his songs.The central thread of HAPPY HERE AND NOW is the confounding side of New Orleans, a wall against the main character finding information about her missing sister. But the magical, unyielding city offers compensatory joys -- second line parades, Ally Sheedy as an older New Orleans kookster/auntee, and hula hip hop in people's apartments.Have you ever seen a movie set in New Orleans that has NO scenes in the French Quarter? This may be the first. Capturing the oddness of the city in scenes such as David Arquette's character working as a termite man who puts huge tents over Victorian houses, director Almareyda captures the soul of America's bottom, a mystery, overlaid onto a tale which is loosely a "mystery" (where's the missing sister).A discrete and oblique joyful noise leads the viewer to these Pied Piper's New World caves, revealing everyday oddness as beautiful.

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