From Romancing the Stone, to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, to Cast Away, few directors had a hot streak like Robert Zemeckis’. Even films that weren’t highly revered upon release like Back to the Future Part II and Death Becomes Her have aged better with time. His motion-capture trilogy might’ve been divisive, but it produced at least one perennial classic with The Polar Express. On the heels of compelling dramas like Flight and The Walk, Zemeckis essentially became a director-for-hire with a subpar adaptation of The Witches and Disney’s soulless remake of Pinocchio. With Here, Zemeckis aims to recapture the glory days, reteaming with Forrest Gump alumni Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, and Eric Roth. While the premise is ambitious and innovative, Here sadly feels stuck in the past.
The “here” in the question refers to a seemingly ordinary spot riddled with history. Using a static shot for almost the entire runtime, the film takes place from the extinction of the dinosaurs to an African-American family selling their house after the pandemic. The film also sandwiches in storylines about a Native American couple, Benjamin Franklin’s illegitimate son, an eccentric pilot, and the inventor of the La-Z-Boy. Here is really only interested in the Young family, however. Hanks and Wright play Richard and Margaret, a young couple with big dreams. As life gets in the way, they find themselves living with Richard’s parents (Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly). Richard keeps telling Margaret that they’ll find a place of their own. Year after year, though, the two find themselves trapped here.
Despite only having one setting, Here is often unfocused. The film randomly jumps between periods, rarely giving us time to connect with anybody outside of the Youngs. If Here wanted to be an anthology of sorts, it needed to flesh out every storyline. Even if the film had solely centered on the Young family, it likely wouldn’t have been a vast improvement. Here seeks to encapsulate life in a bottle, but the characters never feel real. They’re more like the people you see in commercials or the photos pre-packaged with picture frames. Although you can sense the filmmakers’ desire to create something sincere, Here comes off as phony.
While the actors all try their best, they can only do so much with cornball dialogue, restrictive staging, and borderline satirical melodrama. It plays like a community theatre production, although that might be an insult to community theatre. The de-aging effects don’t do the performances any favors. Even at the technology’s most convincing, Hanks and Wright look like middle-aged people pretending to be teenagers. Whose idea was it to give Hanks the same haircut as Ben Platt in the Dear Evan Hansen movie? The fixed POV does lead to some clever transitions, paying homage to the comic strip and graphic novel that served as inspiration, but it’s more gimmicky than anything else. The only thing more distracting is Alan Silvestri’s musical score, which regularly shoves inspiration down our throats.
Here is like a cross between Forrest Gump and The Tree of Life. Both films are classics, but they couldn’t be more different. Forrest, Jenny, and Lieutenant Dan fit wonderfully into the world Zemeckis established. In a Terrence Malick film, they’d feel out of place. Here aspires to be romanticized and reflective, yet the tones and styles never mesh. If you want to see a much better generation-spanning story starring Hanks, Cloud Atlas deserves a wider following. As for Here, Zemeckis’ heart is in the right place (yet still misplaced). I’d like to think he still has a great film in him. I’d even take pretty good at this point. Much like the characters here, though, Zemeckis can’t seem to break free.