Edinburgh International Film Festival review

Billy Crystal and Tiffany Haddish share a wonderful chemistry in Here Today before drowning in a tsunami of schmaltz in the final reel.

The film has all the beats of a rom-com, although without the pair actually being a couple. Even Hollywood has come to realise that a relationship between a 73-year-old man and a 41-year-old woman comes with issues.

Crystal, who also directs, plays Charlie Burnz, a revered comedy writer now seeing out his dog days on a Saturday Night Live-style sketch show called This Just In. As you can imagine, the writers’ room scenes zing with life, even if the finished sketches (especially the one his wise mentorship reputedly saved) aren’t really up to scratch.

The spark that sets off this story is an incident that genuinely happened to original SNL writer Alan Zweibel, Crystal’s real-life buddy, who once offered a lunch date as a prize for a silent charity auction. Come the meal, he found the winner had paid just $22 to be there. Then things got even worse as she ordered a seafood salad, which gave her an allergic reaction.

And that is precisely how Charlie meets Tiffany Haddish’s Emma, taking responsibility for getting her to hospital and settling her medical bills, which triggers the odd-couple friendship. She’s not the most three-dimensional character ever committed to film, but ever-watchable Haddish makes her wonderfully charismatic. Emma's certainly feisty and injects some much-needed pizazz into Charlie's life – as demonstrated by her livening up his granddaughter’s bat mitzvah with a spirited r&b classic, to the chagrin of the more strait-laced members of the family. It’s a clump of clichés, but warm-hearted and effective.

The grit in the story comes as Charlie is suffering from dementia. He fails to recognise his son, has to take the same route to work lest he become confused, and at an onstage Q&A with Barry Levinson and Sharon Stone, forgets who both of them are. Given his reputation, the audience take it as a joke. He also experiences flashbacks, some of which are weird and some of which recall in soft-focus his romance with his late wife, Carrie (Louisa Krause).

But these are isolated incidents, which give them more impact. He is lucid and still has fine comic instincts at work. A stand-out scene has him lose his rag at one of the sketch show performers who repeatedly mangles his jokes, a Network-style meltdown that electrifies live TV… and anyone watching this movie. This is Crystal in his pomp.

In the last 20 minutes or so after this, the film starts losing its edge and its light humour as Charlie confronts his illness and his guilt over an incident in his past, for which his family has never forgiven him. Tears flow and emotional music swells as all comes to the fore in a picturesque landscape heavy with meaning for our central character… but it feels saccharine and manipulative.

But this aside, time spent with Crystal and Haddish is a charm, and there’s plenty to enjoy in this warm-hearted intergeneration buddy movie.

• Here Today is being screened at the Edinburgh Filmhouse at 7pm, 7.15pm and 7.30pm tomorrow as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.  

Review date: 24 Aug 2021
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett