The Reel Review
A house serves as the focal point for multiple generations of people living there over the course of time, in this romantic drama starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Kelly Reilly and Paul Bettany. This vignette-filled look at the human experience – the highs, the lows, the memorable milestones and deaths – is based on the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire.
Working from a screenplay he wrote with Forrest Gump co-writer Eric Roth, director Robert Zemeckis clearly had noble intentions – Here could have been an awe-inspiring, deeply nostalgic film. But the bland, half-baked execution, with frenetic mini vignettes jumping back and forth in time to a collage of white picture frames, is jarring and lacks emotional depth. The decision to start the film in the prehistoric era of dinosaurs was the first sign of trouble. Much of the film’s dialogue is so badly contrived and the acting so wooden (Bettany, in particular, until his final scene) that Here resembles a really amateurish off-off-Broadway play. There also are way too many characters/cast members – Downton Abbey‘s Michelle Dockery, in particular, is wasted as the home’s Victorian era inhabitant. The wonky de-aging CGI on Hanks and Wright is also distracting.
Despite all of those problems, there are a handful of touching moments in Here, nearly all involving the decline and deaths of loved ones, and the set design showing the different eras is at least mildly interesting. But beyond that, Here is a frustratingly vapid, depressing story about human connection that doesn’t really connect, instead having all the depth of a bland holiday TV commercial.
REEL FACTS
• Here marks the fifth collaboration between Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks, after 1994’s Forrest Gump, 2000’s Cast Away, 2004’s Polar Express and 2022’s Pinocchio.
• The film reunites eight cast and crewmembers from 1994’s Forrest Gump – director Zemeckis, stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in their first film together since starring in that Oscar winning film, co-writer Eric Roth, cinematographer Don Burgess, composer Alan Silvestri, sound designer Randy Thom and costume designer Joanna Johnston.
• Robert Zemeckis’ daughter Zsa Zsa and wife Leslie appear in the film respectively as the teenage Vanessa and former President Benjamin Franklin’s daughter-in-law Elizabeth.
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