By Keith Walther | Rose Law Group Reporter
30 years after “Forrest Gump,” one of the best films of 1994, director Robert Zemeckis reunites with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright to create one of the worst films of 2024. “Here” is a non-linear drama that shows the exact same spot from the moment a meteor wiped out the dinosaurs to present time. While the concept may be unique, the execution is disastrous with a story that is virtually impossible to feel connected.
Unlike the camera, the story moves all over the place throughout time depicting different families occupying the same space. The camera remains fixed in one spot for almost the entire duration of the film, showing the transformation of that space from its lush, green beginnings to a living room in a grand house. Constant flashbacks and flashforwards occur showing the various families who have lived in this house since the beginning, but the most time is spent focused on Richard (Tom Hanks), his father Al (Paul Bettany), his mother Rose (Kelly Reilly), and his high school sweetheart Margaret (Robin Wright).
Viewers are subjugated to constant snippets of memories created within the small space that sum up life. Achievements, love, matrimony, and birth occur in this living room throughout time, but many more depressing events happen in this same spot, like abandoning dreams for practicality, alcoholism, stroke, influenza, Covid, Alzheimer’s, racial tension, divorce, and death. One may wonder with the amount of bad luck that occurs here, why didn’t any of these residents think to sage and/or have the room blessed by a priest?
Despite having directed terrific films like “Forrest Gump,” “Back to the Future,” “Contact,” and “Cast Away,” Robert Zemeckis has not helmed a decent film in almost 10 years with 2022’s “Pinocchio” being his most recent failure. The Oscar winner tries to be exceedingly clever with his non-linear and fixed camera approach in “Here,” but it blows up in his face. He uses a picture in picture technique for every timeline transition, which becomes increasingly distracting as the movie drags on with the nauseating amount of flipping back and forth. Inexplicably, aside from the main family storyline, he introduces characters briefly with a mini-story and then abandons them without any development. This makes their outcomes pointless with zero impact on the main storyline. Zemeckis shamelessly attempts obvious sentimental ploys to elicit tearful reactions, but the complete lack of connectivity sucks the moisture out of those tear ducts, making them as arid as an Arizona summer.
As if the lack of story was not enough, locking the camera in place supplying the living room as the only viewing option for the audience gets old in a hurry. Watching a drab living room for about two hours is not ideal for generating entertainment and excitement. To make matters worse, Zemeckis tries to deage Tom Hanks and Robin Wright to look like teenagers in high school. This is painfully unsuccessful and laughable, especially with Hanks’ gravelly old man type of voice. Following Francis Ford Coppola’s horrendous “Megalopolis,” this is yet another example of an aging director whose vision gets in the way of making an entertaining movie.
If Tom Hanks and Robin Wright were like peas and carrots in “Forrest Gump,” that chemistry has long since evaporated 30 years later. Their efforts at demonstrating teenage love were stiff and unbelievable, overacting the exuberance of teens in a comically pathetic way. Having Paul Bettany, who’s significantly younger than both Hanks and Wright, play the father is also absurd. There were multiple scenes of him going to the same spot in the living room to get lost in thought and offer up generic words of wisdom that made his over-the-top performance more befitting of a stage than a movie. While everyone in the cast was guilty of overacting, the poorly written dialogue and direction is mostly to blame.
For those of you who were excited for “Here,” thinking this reunion of the “Forrest Gump” cast and crew would create movie magic once again, prepare to be sorely disappointed. Time flies. Life sucks and then you die. These seem to be the adages this film is based on, which makes for an unwatchable experience, especially being only able to view a boring living room. It plays out like community theater at its absolute worst with the audience groaning in exasperation, eagerly awaiting the end credits to escape the meaningless production.
This movie earns:
