Here

Much has been made in the advanced publicity for this movie of reuniting the "Forrest Gump" gang, Hanks, Wright, and director Zemeckis. While that is all appropriate it in a way takes away from what this movie is really about. It has lots of stars playing lots of interesting characters but at its core it is a story about a location, a piece of land, a room in a house, and what happens there over the eons.

I say eons because the story actually begins on a prehistoric Earth when dinosaurs roamed then met their eventual fate when asteroids allegedly wiped them out. We see a time-lapse of the land changing, of vegetation growing, of Native Americans arriving and hunting. But always this one same plot of land.

Then, in the 1700s we see trees being felled and a large house being built, we later learn it was a Franklin home, yes that family which included Benjamin. We get quick glimpses of historical events, like the revolt against England, the early beginnings of aviation, the flu epidemic of 1918, WW2, student deferments during the Vietnam time, the invention of television, the 1960s arrival of The Beatles. However none of that is depicted dryly, the story shows the people and how they participated in or were influenced by the changes. Many times a TV running in the background helps us know the time, like watching Jane Fonda exercise or a clip from the old Dean Martin and Ed Sullivan TV shows.

The unique cinematography technique is to use a static camera and standard focal length from one spot in the room where family activities commonly took place. About the same view as a person in one seat in a theater viewing a stage play that covers many generations. Or a person sitting in the corner of that room for several hundred years.

Tom Hanks is Richard. His family were not the original residents of the house but are mainly featured in it.

Robin Wright is Margaret who eventually marries Richard. They have children, Richard puts his painting passion on hold to get a job that makes money to support his growing family. They get old in the house, and as the story ends both of them are not far from the ends of their lives.

My wife and I watched this movie at home, streaming on Prime. Because we are in our 70s and have seen a lot, and can identify with many of the tings depicted here, we found it totally absorbing and entertaining. Maybe younger viewers would not identify so well. But we consider this a fine movie, one of the better ones we have seen in recent years.

Edit: Two months later I got the DVD of this movie from my public library and watched it again. The experience was even better, knowing where it was headed and being able to appreciate some of the finer points. The disc also has an interesting extra which talks about and shows the technique that was used to de-age the faces of the main characters.

Here is not a film for everyone. It tries something different, with a single focused camera angle and a story that takes place over hundreds (or millions) of years. But that is also part of the issue that keeps it from excelling. We get little time with every story point, with most scenes taking 1-5 minutes before jumping to the next scene. It also takes a bit to get going before we get to the meat of the story.

If it had been a bit more focused on our main group of characters, the ending would have had a much bigger impact. There was also a bit too much CGI that looked rough and a focus on getting characters right up to the camera for scenes all felt a bit too forced. It's also a bit over the top of how much stuff happens in a single space.

In the end, 'Here' is an ambitious film that ultimately fails to deliver a fully satisfying story as it's too concerned with its notion of showing you everything that has happened in this one spot and making the camera angle the main focal point of the story.

I did not know what to expect from "Here" for two reasons. First, I have not closely followed director Robert Zemeckis' filmography as of late. I have seen all-time classics from him in the "Back to the Future" trilogy, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," and "Forrest Gump" and underrated gems like "Death Becomes Her," "What Lies Beneath," and "The Polar Express," so I have not been exposed to any disappointments from him yet. Second, I knew beforehand that they used artificial intelligence to de-age Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. In a year with remarkable advancements in AI and almost a year after the SAG-AFTRA strikes, "Here" looks to be the first major Hollywood film to utilize the technology to a large extent. Nevertheless, I was willing to go in with an open mind. After seeing it, one vital element holds it back from being a classic, but it is good.

To start, the actors delivered. Thirty years after their pairing in "Forrest Gump," Tom Hanks and Robin Wright give compelling performances as Richard and Margaret Young, as their story of living through the central home is the bulk of the narrative. For the other standout, Paul Bettany commits as Richard's father, Al.

Robert Zemeckis directs this incredibly ambitious film in a way that feels distinctly Zemeckis. The story is unique, with the movie following a (mostly) unbroken shot of a house through centuries, and it deserves a director who can make it feel special. Every film I have seen from Zemeckis that I described was magical, and "Here" is no exception.

I felt the film's opening scene was beautiful and a flawless way to open it. It showcases what the movie will offer over the following 1 hour and 45-minute runtime, making it one of its defining scenes.

I have mixed-to-positive feelings about the film's AI usage. Aside from a few moments, the de-aging was wildly convincing, and it felt like Hanks and Wright were much younger than they are now. I more or less say mixed because I am not the biggest fan of AI usage in media, and I am one of the many who believe that creativity in Hollywood is only human.

Moving on to the negative worth mentioning: the film's time division and utilization are not great. I liked the main storyline revolving around the Young family. However, they occasionally cut to other periods, which felt like excuses to sell the fixed frame gimmick further. The additional plot lines had emotional moments, but the characters lacked development. Any feelings of sadness worked during the time we spent with the Youngs. It may be a necessary annoyance because the main plot may not have satisfied the 1:45 runtime nearly as well.

Overall, "Here" mainly was a success. It will not be an awards season frontrunner, as "Conclave" and "Anora" are also in theaters. However, as a film fan appreciative of Hanks and Zemeckis and intrigued by the experimental nature of this film, the movie was enjoyable.

Technically, the performances, the charming screenplay, the impressive AI de-aging, and the overall execution make the technical score a 9/10.

For the enjoyment score, its utilization of time is my main complaint. Though it weighs the film down, it can not remove how outstanding and entertaining it is. For those reasons, the enjoyment score is a 7/10. I can not call it a masterpiece, but it was better than it had any right to be.

The most intriguing part of this movie, to me, was the clever use of technology to jump back and forth in time - but not space - to show what had happened at one unremarkable place in the area now occupied by New England from the age of the dinosaurs to today. Transitions are often effected by adding picture-in-picture windows on top of the one central video and then jumping to a different time in some of the smaller windows before the whole screen changes to that era as well. I'll confess that that gimmick did grow old after a while, but I still found it at least sometimes clever.

There were, however, problems for me, which some of the previous fourteen reviewers have already pointed out.

The main story - that of the Young family, through its three generations - is not particularly interesting. But the other, minor stories, that are woven in and out of it are really of no interest at all. Why should we care about one of Ben Franklin's sons? Or the Indian/Native American young woman and her young lover? Or even the man who invents the Lazy Boy recliner? Nothing is done to link those stories to the main one, and they are of no interest by themselves.

That was particularly true of the short time we spent with a young African-American couple who live in the house for some unspecified time in our modern era. (They have COVID masks.) All we see of them, really, is that the woman gets along well with her Latina housekeeper. And that the father at one point gives his son what we white folk are told is 'the talk," in which the father tells the son how to behave when stopped by a white police officer so that he doesn't get killed by same. That's pretty much of a cliché, and none of my Black friends ever had such a talk with their parents.

Nothing really holds these various stories together. Since they are not of themselves interesting, and don't reinforce the main one, that's a problem.

I wasn't bored. I could even see watching this movie again on tv, where I could pause it for a break now and then. But once in the theater, while not boring, was enough for me.

This film takes a different approach to storytelling. Instead of big, dramatic events, it focuses on the small, quiet moments that make up everyday life. It's set in one house and shows the lives of the families who lived there over different generations, with most of the story following one family as they grow older together, and how time changes everything.

It's a simple and thoughtful movie that reminds us to appreciate the ordinary moments we often overlook. It might not be what people expected, but it leaves a lasting impression if you take the time to really watch and reflect. I think the ending was emotional if you put yourself in their shoes.