Here is proof that you can teach an old dog new tricks. Just not well. Robert Zemeckis returns to the silver screen to direct an experimental film where the camera doesn’t move. Showing us the history of a single spot is ambitious and to add to the prestige, Zemeckis reunites Forrest Gump darlings Tom Hanks and Robin Wright to tell part of this place’s history.
From dinosaurs to colonization to the 1900s to the COVID era, we literally see it all from one fixed spot. At times we are in a forest, on a road, and then finally in a house that sees many owners over a hundred-year period. Most of these stories don’t get the attention they deserve or the time for us to grow attached to the characters (this is especially true for the Indigenous and Black couples that we see, but we’ll get to that). We jump back and forth in time, but the majority of the narrative focuses on one family that lives in the house from the 50s to the 2010s. Al (Paul Bettany) is a soldier returning to the States and looking to buy a home with his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly). They do and raise their three children in it, including Richard, played by an often AI de-aged Tom Hanks. We see him bring home his future wife, Margaret (Robin Wright), and how they build a life together.
Squares of various sizes will appear at different times to show us what a different time period is doing. Sometimes it’s to move the story along and sometimes it’s to connect the periods together. Once you realize that Here is based on Richard McGuire’s graphic novel of the same name, the frame-within-a-frame framing device makes sense. It doesn’t always work, but you can see the inspiration.
Some storylines work better than others. There’s a La-Z Boy plotline starring Ophelia Lovibond and David Fynn that is quite fun. Michelle Dockery plays a rightfully uptight housewife with an adventurous husband which is predictable yet satisfying. However, the actors in every period are straight-up play-acting and it does not work. Their cadence and delivery feel cheesy and false. The script by Zemeckis and Eric Roth is filled with cliché and their use of characters of color is pitiful. They are there but not given enough time to build a connection to the audience. At one point, Nicholas Pinnock and Nikki Amuka-Bird sit down with their son for “The Talk” about how their Black son should interact with police officers. It is arguably the character’s only big moment and feels completely thrown into the script.
I really appreciate that someone of Robert Zemeckis’s age and stature is trying something new. But experimentalism and sentimentality can often clash and the latter is something he is known for. Here is dripping with it. From Alan Silvestri’s cutesy score to its often cliche dialogue, everywhere you turn there is schmaltz.
At one point, a drunk Alan tells a teenage Richard that he cheated on his mother. In response, the kid replies, “Why are you doing this?” It’s a good question for this movie. I could see Zemeckis and Roth possibly going for a Thorton Wilder feel, an “Our Town” effect. They could be trying to show us that the boringness and mundanity of a place is ultimately what makes it special. That it’s the quiet everyday moments that give our lives meaning. We’ll never know because the execution of Here is all over the place.
Here is now playing in theaters. Watch the trailer below.
