Are You Here

Are You Here

A comedy without laughs. A drama that seems to have no connection with any known reality. You could diagnose “Are You Here” with schizophrenic genre disorder, but that would just be an excuse for what it really is: a total mess that wants to give us more of the man child run amok ous, Hollywood-style.

At times it wants to be a “Broadcast News”-style comedy, with Owen Wilson as the sort of smarmy philandering mooch he’s played countless times before. The twist here is that he’s a local TV weatherman in Annapolis, Md., who makes Bill Murray’s on-air forecaster in “Groundhog Day” look like a paragon of repeated virtue.

Steve Dallas (Wilson) is indeed a one-man rodeo: full of bull and proud of it. He needs to have a potential bed partner at the ready at all times whether it’s a co-worker, casual pickup or prostitute. He also enjoys peeping at his shapely across the way neighbor as she undresses in front of her windows each evening, and not in a Jimmy Stewart non-creepy way. Then there’s his delightful habit of pretending he can pay with his worthless credit cards and his constant use of mind-altering substances even while on the job.

Other times, “Are You Here” seems like an “August: Osage County”-type portrait of a dysfunctional family when Steve’s best and seemingly only friend Ben (Zach Galifianakis) learns that his estranged father has died and they must take a road trip to rural Pennsylvania for the funeral. To mention that this hirsute near-hermit, manic-depressive idealist and fellow pothead living in a mobile shack whose interior decorator was clearly the Unabomber is played by Galifianakis is stating the obvious.

There’s even an inkling of “Witness,” as Amish folk occasionally materialize and quickly depart, perhaps in a vain attempt to add some existential homespun quality to the overreaching muddle that unfolds. There is a plot of sorts, one involving the ever-popular contested last will and testament, but it strains to tie together the onslaught of disparate themes.

The most amazing thing about “Are You Here” isn’t the casually inserted pseudo-incestuous sex scene that no sane person would ever want to see. Nor is it that there’s an actual chicken running around with its head cut off at some point. Or even that an actress as far above this enterprise as Amy Poehler agreed to play Ben’s sister, a miserable shrew defined by her harsh eyeliner and seething dissatisfaction tied to her inability to have children.

No, the most shocking thing is that Matthew Weiner is behind this sorry excuse for a movie. The much-praised creator of TV’s “Mad Men” and invaluable contributor to “The Sopranos” has spent eight years on this ill-conceived project? “Are You Here” isn’t his true feature debut that would be a tiny 1996 effort called “What Do You Do All Day?” but it is his first film to reach theaters. As a frustrated would-be filmmaker, he seems to have dumped every idea he ever had onto the screen, including a prominent farmhouse kitchen sink, with little apparent interest in self-editing.

I can’t believe this man created Peggy Olson, Joan Harris and Sally Draper just to write Angela (Laura Ramsey, who appeared in “Mad Men’s” “The Jet Set” episode), Ben and Terri’s impossibly young, earth-mama stepmother who walks around in soft white clothes even though she lives on a farm. She has no purpose except to satisfy men’s desires, like Wilson or Ben or his dad with their nausea-inducing sexual history.

I’ll give Weiner this: He does make some interesting casting choices among his supporting ranks. Like the fact that he must watch series that aren’t his own otherwise how would he be smart enough to hire Paul Schulze, so great as pharmacist Eddie on “Nurse Jackie,” as Wilson’s boss? Or Lauren Lapkus, the female prison guard Suzanne on “Orange Is the New Black,” as his fawning coworker?

But if Matthew Weiner weren’t Matthew Weiner there is no way this script would attract director Peter Bogdanovich (also of “The Sopranos”) as a judge and Edward Herrmann as Ben’s therapist or convince Jenna Fischer of “The Office” to show up in the final 10 minutes or so in a nothing role.

Maybe he deserved it. Maybe he got it out of his system. But maybe he should worry more about putting together a satisfying finale for “Mad Men” next spring (he already told Rolling Stone he is expecting mixed reviews) than throwing himself at such a flimsy windmill of a movie.

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