Last fall Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner’s highly anticipated feature directing debut – then titled You Are Here – premiered at the Toronto Film Festival to mostly negative reviews. Since then the movie has been re-edited and retitled slightly – to Are You Here – and now we have our first look at the results.
Weiner couldn’t have asked for a better cast of comedic performers for his first time out in the feature world, as the movie stars Zach Galifianakis(The Hangover), Owen Wilson (Wedding Crashers), and Amy Poehler (TV’s Parks and Recreation). Galifianakis plays a bi-polar man who, after his father dies, has to enlist the help of his best friend (Wilson) in a battle over the inheritance with his sister (Poehler). Not surprisingly, it looks as though the man behind one of TV’s darkest dramas has brought a touch of sadness and genuine emotion to the story, making it more of a serio-comedy. For the busy Galifianakis, it appears he gets to add some depth to the quirky oddball we’re used to watching him play.
Millenium will release the fairly small-scale movie in the midst of the summer season on August 22nd. Presumably, their hope is that the big names in the cast will attract summer moviegoers who otherwise might not be drawn to such a low-key story. For his part, Weiner will hope to have more success than fellow TV showrunner titan David Chase (The Sopranos), whose first foray into the feature film world, 2012’s Not Fade Away, failed to find much of an audience.
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