Robert Zemeckis is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get. Here is a drama movie gift-wrapped with potential. With Zemeckis as director, a screenplay from Eric Roth, Tom Hanks, and Robin Wright headlining the cast, a musical score from Alan Silvestri, cinematography from Don Burgess, and costumes from Johanna Johnston, this movie features the same creative team as 1994’s Forrest Gump. There’s something poetic about how, 30 years after Zemeckis made one of my favorite movies of all time, he reunited his old team to make a new movie that also spans decades.
Unfortunately, Here is a middling, disappointing movie that never brings its premise anywhere meaningful. It’s tough to compare this film to something like Forrest Gump, but getting back the same creative team leads to inevitable comparisons. Even without bringing that film into the conversation, this movie is a mixed bag. There’s an excellent concept here, as the camera stays in one fixed position throughout the runtime. We have scenes dating back to the age of the dinosaurs, the asteroid that wiped them out, the Native Americans that once lived there, the creation of American civilization, and we have the family we spend the most amount of time with, featuring a love story between Richard (Hanks) and Margaret (Wright).
It’s an astonishing feat of filmmaking that makes audiences feel like a fly on the wall. It’s based on Richard McGuire’s graphic novel, and there are many moments where Zemeckis allows the visuals to create panels as if we’re looking at images straight out of the novel. The concept encourages us to reevaluate our relationship with our place. As you sit or stand here reading this review, you exist in a place with thousands of years of history. Here makes you think about what a place could have looked like 100 years ago or will look like 100 years from now.
Zemeckis’s career is filled with big swings. I’m eternally grateful to him for making my favorite movie of all time, Back to the Future. He has spent his career pushing the envelope in visual effects, using performance capture in films like The Polar Express and Welcome to Marwen and putting hand-drawn animation into live-action footage in films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
This movie is not his best work. It uses generative A.I. to face swap and de-age the actors, which is a new technological innovation that allows de-aging to occur in real-time rather than in post. It looks on par with other de-aging effects but can sometimes be distracting. There’s a scene where I looked at Hanks and Wright for a whole scene, believing they were, at best, in their early 30s. When the dialogue revealed they were supposed to be high schoolers, my suspension of disbelief broke.
Beyond that, while putting the camera in one place for the entire film is a fascinating concept, it puts the characters at arm’s length. But it can feel at times like watching a stage play where everything is happening a little too far away for you to feel the powerful emotions the way you can in film. That’s not to say there are no stage plays that can stir powerful emotions. The issue with Here extends beyond that. Each scene ends a bit too quickly. Every moment feels far too fleeting to leave a strong impact.
The decision to have a nonlinear structure spanning centuries ends up more detrimental than helpful. There are moments where it feels like we’re right about to get invested in the conflicts between Richard, Margaret, and Richard’s father, Al (Paul Bettany). But right when you almost care, the film cuts away to some scene set decades ago about a guy who creates a La-Z-Boy chair or a romance between two Native Americans.
Here is too overstuffed with subplots that never amount to anything of value. The film continuously shows you scenes of characters you never feel connected to. It would be different if each scene made you laugh, cry, or at least get invested in their pain and struggles. But imagine this: what if you watched your neighbors through a window for about 30 seconds? And what if you never saw them again, and then you did the same thing again in a few years? You watch them again and see they haven’t changed much since the last time. That is not interesting. You don’t feel like you know them as people by doing this. You’re just getting brief glimpses of them.
Here is a movie that doesn’t amount to or say anything. There is not enough conflict to justify this film. Even the performances can sometimes feel too staged. There’s beauty in the idea that so much life happens in one place. There are humorous moments, but they’re few and far between. It’s a premise that could have gotten you to care so much about the people living in this film, but you don’t. It doesn’t build to anything, instead feeling like a long, nonlinear montage. The scenes should have been longer, and nothing separates our main couple from other couples in other films. Nothing makes them unique. We don’t get a sense of who they are beyond one character trait they have.
While the production design and musical score from Alan Silvestri are superb, and the movie never bores you or overstays its welcome, Here is a disappointing movie that has a lot of talent behind the camera but not much else beneath the surface.
SCORE: 5/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 5 equates to “Mediocre.” The positives and negatives wind up negating each other, making it a wash.
