Here Today

Charlie Burnz, an ageing comedy writer, has been diagnosed with dementia and hides it from everyone around him. A lunch date won at a charity auction brings him together with Emma, a street singer much younger than he is, and an unexpected friendship forms. The film is not interested in the illness. It is interested in a writer losing his words: a man whose profession is language stops in the middle of sentences, and the film shows it as comic timing breaking down. The form moves between light comedy and drama, with flashbacks opening up his wife's death and the guilt left over from it. Billy Crystal directed and stars, and wrote the screenplay with Alan Zweibel from Zweibel's short story. Tiffany Haddish plays Emma, and the difference in age and manner between the two carries all the humour. Who it is for: viewers who like light American comedy and stories of friendship across generations. Who it is not for: anyone who resists emotional steering. Towards the end the film brings in the music and the tears quite openly.