'Here' Review - Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks Are Back, but Not Better Than Ever

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Here

Richard McGuire’s brilliant graphic novel Here is an overwhelming, ambitious, beautiful yet jarring story of one small slice of our planet shown throughout millions of years. Focusing on a specific corner of Earth without ever changing its perspective, we’re shown how our world shifts, going from when dinosaurs roamed to building a modest home, all the way to the future, where spacesuit-clad students come to study our destroyed planet. McGuire’s story shows the staggering amount of inevitable change, the moments in our existence that are cyclical, and how almost reassuring it is that everything will die and change eventually. It’s the type of gargantuan story made for a filmmaker like Robert Zemeckis. Well…the Zemeckis of a few decades ago, that is.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, it was hard to think of a filmmaker more ballsy than Zemeckis, a director who merged the animated and real worlds with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, pushed forward the potential of utilizing special effects in a more naturalistic way with Forrest Gump, and fittingly, moved back and forward through time with the Back to the Future trilogy. But the 21st century has been full of more misses than hits for Zemeckis, as we’ve seen strange motion-capture animations from the uncanniest pits of hell in The Polar Express, Beowulf, and 2009’s A Christmas Carol, and odd adaptations of existing films, like Welcome to Marwen, The Witches, and 2022’s atrocious Pinocchio, with glimmers of his former greatness occasionally popping up in films like Flight, The Walk, and Allied.

With Here, Zemeckis takes an ambitious swing the likes of which we haven’t seen from him in quite some time. And while Here is a messy, scattershot, and often laughable attempt to bring the grandiosity of life to the screen in a fairly economical fashion, we once again get those occasional glimmers that remind us of Zemeckis’ capabilities as a creator of movie magic.

What Is 'Here' About?

Like McGuire’s book, Here shows us the perspective of one sliver of the world without changing its viewpoint. While we get glimpses of the dinosaurs and a Native American couple who once lived on these lands, Here is largely confined to the living room of a Colonial-style home in New England. The screenplay, written by Zemeckis and Eric Roth —who won an Oscar for his work on Forrest Gump — shows us the various families who have lived in this home for over a century. Here introduces us to the owner of the house across the screen, William Franklin (Daniel Betts), the unacknowledged son of Benjamin Franklin; an aspiring pilot (Gwilym Lee) and his wife (Michelle Dockery) who wants her husband to stop this passion she fears will get him killed; an inventor of a reclining chair (David Fynn) and his pin-up model partner (Ophelia Lovibond); and as we jump forward in time, the home’s first new owners in years, the Harris family (Nikki Amuka-Bird and Nicholas Pinnock), who are raising their teenage son (Cache Vanderpuye).

However, these moments are all interspersed around the primary focus of the story: the Young family. WWII veteran Al Young (Paul Bettany) moves in with his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly), and before long they’re raising a family, which includes their oldest, Richard Young (Tom Hanks). When Richard is still a teenager, he brings over his new girlfriend Margaret (Robin Wright), and soon after, the two are getting ready to have a child while barely adults themselves, getting married and putting their own dreams aside to support the family. The new couple stays in the family home until they can raise the money to afford their own place — a dream that feels like it’ll never come. As we mostly see the Young family’s story in chronological order (with a few exceptions), we also get little vignettes of those who lived in this area before and after them.

'Here' Reunites the Cast and Crew of 'Forrest Gump'

McGuire’s graphic novel was largely impersonal, for better or worse, and as with Roth’s other grand, sprawling tales like Forrest Gump and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Here attempts to inject some heart into source material that's rather indifferent. At times, Here feels like a mixture of a holiday commercial and Disney World’s Carousel of Progress ride, with the slightest dash of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life thrown in for good measure. What worked on the page doesn’t translate the same way, with a film that is frequently too on-the-nose (one needle-drop of “Our House” feels especially egregious), unintentionally silly (a plot that brings COVID into the mix doesn’t work as well as it wants), and stagey due to the one-location presentation.

'Here' Has Some Beautiful, Tender Moments About Life

But every once in a while Here hits on a moment of pure, unexpected heart. This is a film that lacks any cynicism, completely earnest in its approach, and its effort to wear its heart unapologetically on its sleeve helps get through the goofier moments throughout. The other mini stories being told feel like tiny shorts injected into the narrative and are completely inessential. But when the film focuses on the Young family’s history, Zemeckis and Roth hit on some lovely moments. The relationship between Hanks and Wright’s Richard and Margaret isn’t a straightforward love story but raises some heartbreaking truths about the dreams we have, the dreams that will never come true, and the beauty that still sprouts up from the life that we didn’t expect for ourselves. Several characters point out how quickly time moves, and with these two, we can see how this is true, as years pass in the blink of an eye, leaving more hopes in the background as life slips away. It’s a relationship that doesn’t go in the easiest directions, and surprisingly, the de-aging techniques used aren’t as distracting as one might expect.

Also particularly moving is the story of Bettany’s Al, who arguably has the greatest arc of these characters, as we watch him grow from a young soldier fresh out of war to the last days of his life. Bettany’s character does slip into cliché here and there, but it’s particularly moving to see how his relationship evolves with Richard and Margaret over the years. Again, when the film narrows its focus on this one family, we can see the intricacies that create a life and how we evolve — and not just focus on how the location evolves over time.

'Here' Is a Reminder of the Power of Robert Zemeckis' Older Work

Yet, jumping into these other secondary stories only holds Here back. While it’s interesting to see how certain moments reverberate over time, it breaks up the story in ways that don’t truly add anything. The inventor and his wife’s story is mostly variations on the same idea, while the Harris family’s exploration of the pandemic and police brutality comes out of nowhere and without the necessary set-up to truly do these segments justice. If anything, Zemeckis and Roth’s script should have deviated more from the book and narrowed in on the Young family even more, allowing for even fewer cutaways.

And because of the structure of this film, flying back and forth in time, Here does unfortunately often feel like an interesting experiment more than a fully-formed story. Instead of fully capturing the majesty of life and all its complications, Here seems more concerned with how remarkable our world is, even in such a narrow, focused space of our world. Which, in its own way, is impressive, but it doesn’t have the emotional impact that it always believes it has. And yet, when Here works, we can feel that excitement that the best Zemeckis films can give us, a feeling that has been all too rare from his work in the 21st century, in a film that’s by far his best work in almost a decade (which, to be honest, isn't saying much).

That’s the push and pull of Here: it’s an experiment that only works here and there, yet when it works, there’s beauty in those rare moments. Hanks, Wright, and Bettany especially are doing solid work with a presentation that could've easily ailed them, while Zemeckis and Roth are trying to create a world that shows the ordinary beauty in the everyday, and sometimes succeeding at that goal. Still, strange storylines, a sprawling narrative, and some awkward choices bring down what is an aspirationally impressive film. There's a true masterpiece hidden somewhere within the DNA of Here, and we can see hints of it all too rarely in this finished project, even though the attempt is admirable. It's great to see that Zemeckis still has the gumption (pun intended) to try and make a film like this after all these years, but as Here says over and over again, time moves fast, and maybe the time for Zemeckis to effectively make films like this has passed.

Here reunites the team behind Forrest Gump, creating a strange, but occasionally moving story that spans millions of years.

Release Date November 15, 2024

Runtime 104 Minutes

Pros

Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, and Paul Bettany are given solid performances not hindered by de-aging technology.
The scope and ambition of Here is downright impressive.

Cons

The sprawling of the nature would've probably been better with more focus.
The story itself can be goofy, laughable, and too on-the-nose too often.

Based on the graphic novel by Richard McGuire, Here is an ambitious and innovative film that explores the lives of multiple families over generations, centered around a single location in New England. The film highlights themes of love, loss, and legacy as it spans centuries, capturing the essence of the human experience.

Release Date November 15, 2024

Runtime 104 Minutes

Here is now playing in theaters. Click below for showtimes.

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