Here

Review by Mark Woodring

“Forrest Gump grows up.”

You can thank my wife for that one. Yes; Hanks and Wright are together again.

**NOTE: this post may be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**

Here - Review
Here (Miramax)

 

104 Minutes, Rated PG-13
Written by Eric Roth, Robert Zemekis, Richard McGuire
Directed by Robert Zemekis

Synopsis:

A generational story about families and the special place they inhabit, sharing in love, loss, laughter, and life.

 

This one had great promise, on paper at least.

What was apparently a very experimental graphic novel is adapted to a very experimental movie, with Zemekis using overlapping timeline “frames” to jump the viewer between 8 (I believe) different times, all shot with the equivalent of a stationary camera, providing a consistent POV of “Here,” where so many lives are lived.

Stationed primarily around the three generations of one family, starting with Al and Rose, played by Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly, then to their son, Richard, and his wife, margaret, played by Tom Hanks and Robin Wright (hence the Forrest Gump joke), and then their daughter, Vanessa, played by Zsa Zsa Zemekis, Here could have been a simple tale of familial, post-WWII America.

Instead, we get windows into the death of the dinosaurs, the life of an Indigenous couple, the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin (really…), a couple and their young daughter in the early 1900s, an inventor and his wife in the 1920s (?), then Al and Rose as they buy the home (Across the street from the aforementioned Colonial home of the bastard Franklin) with his GI Bill.

Also scattered in there is the life of a black couple and their son… and we’ll get back to that in a moment.

Long story short (unlike this movie, despite its sub-2 hour runtime) is that Here is neither here nor there. It’s cinematographic conceit is pretentious to the point of distraction, and its varied storylines are neither inventive nor compelling.

It’s a mess, to put it bluntly.

Post-war Al, as portrayed by Bettany, borders on Willy Loman’s frustrated traveling salesman, and Richard’s too-young father abandons his dream of being a graphic artist in order to pay the bills of a young family and so becomes…. a salesman!

The women are treated no better, as we learn both Rose and Margaret abandon their dreams as life intrudes in the form of children and bills.

It’s all so cliche and predictable as to make one choke on it. But that’s not enough for Zemekis, already known as a sentimental filmmaker, who wrings every drop of possible emotion or (melo)drama from every possible interaction between characters.

And it’s all handled so clumsily it hurts.

Oh, and the black family I barely mentioned earlier? They have less screen-time then the dinosaurs, and the only real scene they have is the father having “the talk” with his teenage son.

You know, the one about how to survive an encounter with the police? That “talk.”

That is apparently all we need to learn about this family.

This scene feels so aggravatingly tacked onto the film that anyone with more than a single brain cell should be outraged at the balls it took for Zemekis to do it. The sheer amount of white guilt and pandering necessary for him to do this must weigh a metric ton.

In the end, Here‘s biggest sin is that it simply isn’t that good. The various aging down and up of its various stars highlights one of Hollywood’s worst trends at the moment: one which should die a fiery death.

Here should have stayed Over There, where people wouldn’t have to watch it. But with its cast, who admittedly do their damndest to carry this mind-numbingly dumb movie, it’s going to be talked about this awards season. Hopefully, all people do is talk about it, not seriously consider it.

Here makes itself at home in theaters Friday, November 1, and stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly,

And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.

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