HERE (2024)

Genre: Drama
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly, Michelle Dockery, Gwilym Lee
Runtime: 1 hr 44 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language and Scene of Intimacy)
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 3 April 2025

Synopsis: Here is an original film about multiple families and a special place they inhabit. The story travels through generations, capturing the most relatable of human experiences.

Movie Review:

 It is not difficult to see what drew Robert Zemeckis to Robert McGuire’s graphic novel.

What if you could tell a story about love, life and loss just by following different generations inhabiting the same house over the years, and indeed the millennia, from the same location within the living room? And indeed, in that regard, you can see why Zemeckis had convinced his longtime muse Tom Hanks to likewise embark on this experiment, continuing a partnership that began with the Academy Award-winning ‘Forrest Gump’ and has seen as many successes (like ‘Cast Away’) as valiant failures (like ‘The Polar Express’).

‘Here’ unfortunately belongs in that latter category. As much as we loved to embrace its “mediation on life” – as Zemeckis himself describes it – the movie is ultimately unable to convince that it is more than just a gimmick, and if we wanted to be kind, a failed but brave experiment.

Notwithstanding a prologue that opens with a prehistoric swamp with rampaging dinosaurs, followed by the Ice Age, and thereafter the blossoming of lush flora, ‘Here’ primarily follows a group of 20^th-century inhabitants that live in the house built on that piece of land from around 1900.

They include a couple (Gwilym Lee and Michelle Dockery) whose husband has a deep passion for airplanes at the time when they were first invented and later dies of the Spanish flu; a bohemian couple in the 1940s (David Finn and Ophelia Lovibond) whose husband invents a reclining armchair that he names the ‘La-Z-Boy Recliner’; Al and Rose Young (Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly) who will become the parents of three kids, Richard, Elizabeth and Jimmy; and last but not least, Richard and Margaret (Tom Hanks and Robin Wright) whose ups and downs as a married couple we follow most closely, and ultimately come to identify with most intimately.

Much has been said and debated about the de-aging technology that Zemeckis had deployed on both Hanks and Wright, but frankly, it is a lot more accomplished than when say Zemeckis first pioneered motion-capture with ‘The Polar Express’. Thanks to these veterans, we are reminded of how important it is to attain fulfilment in marriage, and not simply let the years go by without ever really achieving the things that matter to either partner. It is credit to both actors that the heart of their story isn’t lost despite the approach that Zemeckis has taken to the material, in particular transporting his viewes in and out of the main story with frankly unmeaningful subplots.

As its title implies, ‘Here’ ultimately proves fleeting because Zemeckis takes not only a non-linear approach to the storytelling but also criss-crosses multiple narratives without much coherence or logic. Even more furstrating is Zemeckis’ use of frames within the same frame, which while faithful to the inter-frame transitions of the book, are just distracting and irrelevant. And last but not least, though reuniting also with ‘Forrest Gump’ screenwriter Eric Roth on this endeavour, the writing feels contrived and often histronic, likely because of the need for each scene to try to make the most impression within the limited time it has to establish its respective subplot.

Though we’d very much like to relive Zemeckis’ brand of sentimentality with Hanks, ‘Here’ undermines what emotions there is within its inter-generational story with visual techniques that come off more like gimmicks than artistry. Zemeckis has never shied away from visual experimentation, and like we said, as much as it is a brave experiement, 'Here’ is ultimately a failed one.

Movie Rating:

(Too many perspectives, too many storylines and too little focus render 'Here' too much of here and there and ultimately nowhere)

Review by Gabriel Chong