Tom Hanks and Robin Wright’s On-Screen Reunion Is an Ugly, Hypocritical Disaster

It’s a struggle to see actors I know are good starring in a film that clearly isn’t. This is the case of Robert Zemeckis Here. It’s an hour and 45 minutes of Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany and others acting in a way that can’t be taken seriously and almost seems fake. The aging is jarring and noticeable, especially when we have to hear 68-year-old Hanks’ voice coming out of what should be an 18-year-old’s mouth, and the film is poorly lit. It’s such a soulless film that I questioned the point of it.

HereThe premise is simple: it is the story of a single house, its history and the people who lived in or on its land. This includes Richard (Hanks) and his family – parents Al (Bettany) and Rose (Kelly Reilly) and wife Margaret (Wright). The film has good intentions and I could see what Zemeckis was trying to do. There are even parts of the film that work and suggest the potential for something truly meaningful and moving, but it’s in the incomplete and egregious execution that Here stumbles and falls, taking his entire cast and our good will with him.

Here’s the story everywhere

To say I was completely taken out of the film after its opening briefly included dinosaurs and the ice age would be an understatement. Things don’t get better after that, unfortunately. The script, by Eric Roth and Zemeckis, who adapted it from Richard McGuire’s comic book, is full of monotonous and poorly delivered dialogue. Moments that are meant to be taken seriously—like Al and Rose’s friend who dies of a heart attack after getting up from the couch and takes a few dramatic steps before falling flat on his face—are unintentionally funny.

Sentimental, and even potentially profound, moments don’t get enough room to breathe, as the film moves quickly from scene to scene and period to period without much thought for fluidity and cohesion. Most of the characters, especially the black characters, have almost no backstories, and there are even a few scenes with Benjamin Franklin’s illegitimate son William that are ridiculous at best and laughable at worst.

There is a forced sense of emotion throughout. Here want us to feel something as we watch these paper-thin characters live out their lives in a house that means nothing to us without doing the work to get us there. I felt absolutely nothing but boredom and an emptiness that the film itself couldn’t eliminate. There are also a lot of characters and we were impressed to follow each one of them until the end.

Characters die (on and off screen) at various points in the film and Zemeckis’s static camera angles desperately ask us to be movedunderstand what these people are going through and relate to them in some way. All you will end up feeling, however, is a cold detachment and confusion as to why this was done. I haven’t read the comic book, but it must certainly be better than this spectacular film.

Even here, the technical elements don’t work

Aside from the questionable speech and occasionally painful acting moments, Here It’s not even good on a technical level. The CGI animals look obviously fake, the aging actors’ faces are as distracting as a Snapchat filter, and the transitions—announced whenever a white outline, usually in the shape of a square or rectangle representing a different era—ages quickly. . The lighting is also garish, as if to emphasize how saccharine and moving it should be, but its approach and tone are more like a commercial (including product placement) or a TV pilot gone wrong.

It’s slow and there’s never anything intriguing enough in the story or characters to hold our attention. Zemeckis is trying something experimental and unique here, but it doesn’t translate into a good or exciting story. The film is more disheartening than anything, as if it belongs to a different time and at the same time feels out of time and in its own bubble. All of this makes for a strange and somewhat disconcerting viewing experience that’s better not to have.

Here It’s now showing in theaters. The film is 104 minutes long and rated PG-13 for thematic material, some suggestive material, brief strong language, and smoking.