Here Today (2021)

Billy Crystal directed, co-wrote, and stars in this sweet story of the friendship between a comedy writer with early stage dementia and a flamboyant singer (Tiffany Haddish). Alan Zweibel co-wrote the screenplay based on his short story The Prize.

Crystal was last blogged for acting in Standing Up, Falling Down, Haddish for Yearly Departed after The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part. Crystal has directed and written two other features, Mr. Saturday Night (1992) and Forget Paris (1995) and directed the the TV movie 61* (2001), as well as many TV credits. 

Zweibel wrote for 109 episodes of Saturday Night Live from its inception in 1976, co-created and wrote for It's Garry Shandling's Show, and much more. Back in 2012, when writing about A Dangerous Method scored by Howard Shore, who played on SNL in the early days, I wrote: "I got to speak with author Alan Zweibel, one of the original Saturday Night Live writers, recently. I mentioned his 'Spud beer' spot (sorry, video isn't readily available but here's a still picture), from that 1975 season, Howard Shore and his "All-Nurse Band" (they were all men, wearing nurse dresses and caps for the bit) performed the song St. James Infirmary and Zweibel played a patient in a hospital gown. Zweibel told us was his very first appearance on TV, and he was impressed that I remembered. Jack said, 'That's just what she does.'"

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are gone today, averaging only 48% for this movie, but its audiences stayed  here averaging an enthusiastic 93. Jack and I vote somewhere between. We liked it.

We had no internet from the first few days of the month and got this on DVD from the library on December 4th when we were jonesing for a movie. At this time it's available to stream on Starz if you have that, for sale on Apple TV or Prime, and probably will be rentable soon.