This movie is not worth the time it takes to watch it. There is no plot and nothing happens. It's just a lot of disconnected, incomprehensible scenes strung together in a pseudo-"arty" way so that the filmmakers can pat themselves on the back about how "artistic" and "important" they are. The characters are sometimes one person and sometimes another person and all the scenes with the computer are just techno-babble garbage. Ooh, and let's put a completely pointless eye-patch on one of the female characters, just to make it interesting and kind of creepy. Except it's NOT interesting at all. On the other hand, since it was made about 10 years ago, Ally Sheedy looks less ravaged in this than she does lately.

I picked this movie because of the blurb on the back of it. I love New Orleans and IFC. The reason I picked the movie though was never addressed. The cast of characters was cool but the stories were so disjointed. After suffering through 90 minutes of a film that started out making sense,well sort of, it made absolutely no sense at the end. By the way, that is 90 minutes of my life that I would like to ask the director to send back to me as soon as possible. I could use them watching a better film. No one had anything to do with nothing in that movie. I have read other reviews and I ask myself what planet was I watching the movie on. I strongly suggest imbibing in a mind altering substance before watching then it may make sense, maybe.

Mysterious, elliptical film that at first I didn't know what to make of, but I found it really lingered in the mind afterwards and was ultimately one of the most memorable films I saw at the 2002 Toronto International film festival; a really unique play between the real and the imiation of the real and the blurring between them. Funny, strange, affecting; I didn't understand all of it, but I liked it.

As a native of New Orleans, when I heard that a movie was being made here that would involve (singer) Ernie K-Doe, my inner monologue was one protracted groan. We are used to having Hollywood portray the city along familiar lines -- lots of gumbo, voodoo and Mardi Gras as a daily occurrence, and maybe a black guy in a cowboy hat as a member of law enforcement. The Big Easy is a perfect example of such a cliche-peppered representation.I put it together a few days later that the director was the director of Nadja, one of my favorite vampire movies, so I thought, well, maybe this guy will get it.And get it he did, getting down with the superamazing and description-defying Ernie K-Doe, sort of the Muhammad Ali of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues. His club, the Mother-in-Law Lounge, served until his death as sort of a pagan night church that improbably brought Orleanians of widely varying stripes together to backchorus his songs.The central thread of HAPPY HERE AND NOW is the confounding side of New Orleans, a wall against the main character finding information about her missing sister. But the magical, unyielding city offers compensatory joys -- second line parades, Ally Sheedy as an older New Orleans kookster/auntee, and hula hip hop in people's apartments.Have you ever seen a movie set in New Orleans that has NO scenes in the French Quarter? This may be the first. Capturing the oddness of the city in scenes such as David Arquette's character working as a termite man who puts huge tents over Victorian houses, director Almareyda captures the soul of America's bottom, a mystery, overlaid onto a tale which is loosely a "mystery" (where's the missing sister).A discrete and oblique joyful noise leads the viewer to these Pied Piper's New World caves, revealing everyday oddness as beautiful.