ARE YOU HERE (2014)

Genre: Drama/Comedy
Director: Matthew Weiner
Cast: Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Poehler, Laura Ramsey, Jenna Fischer, Lauren Lapkus, Paul Schulze, Joel Gretsch, Alana De La Garza
RunTime: 1 hr 54 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Coarse Language, Nudity and Drug Use) 
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 11 September 2014

Synopsis: When Steve Dallas (Owen Wilson), a womanizing local weatherman, hears that his off-the-grid best friend Ben Baker (Zach Galifianakis) has lost his estranged father, the two return to Ben's childhood home to discover Ben has inherited the family fortune leaving the ill-equipped duo to battle Ben's formidable sister (Amy Poehler) and deal with his father's gorgeous 25-year-old widow (Laura Ramsey).

Movie Review:

Is Are You Here funny? Not really. Meaningful? Maybe. Worth the time? I doubt so.

From the creator of Mad Men, Matthew Weiner’s directorial debut is a laborious mess of comedy-drama that somehow just doesn’t click despite having talents like Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis and Amy Poehler on the cast list.   

Wilson and Galifianakis play two lifelong friends, Steve Dallas and Ben Baker. Steve is a smooth-talking, womanizer who works as a weatherman on a local television while Ben spends his days detached from the outside world smoking weed, ranting about the environment and back to smoking weed. But things started to change when Ben learnt that his estranged deceased father has left him a huge fortune hoping it will turn his life around.

And so will a nice rural farmhouse, a grocery store, a 150-arce farm and a young beautiful stepmother Angela (Laura Ramsey) change the lives of both Steve and Ben?

Just when you thought Weiner can weave some magic into these characters. There’s whole lot of yapping that doesn’t work, scenes that are overlong and well, lots of clever lines that come out oddly dull. It’s not the fault of the cast because Galifianakis has played the neurotic, paranoid, man-boy to perfection. His co-star, Wilson of course has always been the laidback womanizer onscreen and even the always funny Poehler is relegated to churning out mean, embarrassing one-liners as Ben’s controlling sister.

The main problem with Are You Here is that it meanders and often throws you off course, like an unnecessary scene where Steven chases and subsequently chops off the head of a chicken for dinner. It certainly isn’t funny and obviously in the wrong territory - we are not watching The Hangover IV are we? Weiner even throws in the occasional naughty bits probably to keep the men in the audience awake.

Are You Here unquestionably has a message about finding your true direction in life, though I don’t really see it in the greedy eyes of Steven and the mentally suffering Ben. The setup failed to convince us about their friendship and by the movie ends after 114 minutes, all the squabbles and fighting are nicely tied up and dumbed down.

Matthew Weiner might wield considerable power on the small screen but an effort like this only leaves us perplexed and disappointed.  

Movie Rating:

(An utterly bloated lesson on human relationships)

Review by Linus Tee