The Stream: Distracting visual effects that do not effectively de-age Tom Hanks and Robin Wright.

The Big Screen: There’s a lot going on despite conceit of the fixed camera position.

The Final Bill: Bad dialogue and distracting visual effects make this movie laughable and bland despite the potential of interesting filmmaking techniques.

– Trip Fontaine
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writers: Eric Roth & Robert Zemeckis based on a graphic novel by Richard McGuire
Stars: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG-13 for thematic material, some suggestive material, brief strong language and smoking.
Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes
Production Companies: Miramax, ImageMovers
Platform: In theaters on November 1, 2024
Notable Trailers: Wicked, The Room Next Door, F1, Moana 2, Paddington in Peru

Hey, Streamers! Here is a movie by Robert Zemeckis starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright that is not a sequel to Forrest Gump. For some reason, the conceit of this movie is that all of the action takes place in one room and the camera is fixed in one spot. In fact, we see a series of things that happened in this one spot from the time that dinosaurs roamed North America until post-COVID times. While the main storyline involves the family of Richard (Tom Hanks) and Margaret Young (Robin Wright) and their comings-and-goings throughout the years in this house, the audience also gets vignettes of an inventor and his wife, an aviator and his wife, the relatives of Benjamin Franklin, and an indigenous couple. A series of unremarkable life events and hijinks ensue.

The success or failure of Here mostly hinges on whether you’re fascinated by a camera being placed in one spot and it capturing whatever crosses its path. Unfortunately, the storylines that play out before the camera are bland and unremarkable. The conglomeration of vignettes that span a vast amount of time are muddled, disjointed, and feel random. There are two big issues with the way this movie is structured: nothing feels important, and it all builds to nothing. When this movie bounces back and forth between the early 20th century, to the early 19th century, to the 1970s to post-COVID times, so little time is spent with anything other than the Young family that it all becomes wallpaper – bland and flat. There’s little connection between the threads and the theme of the movie is lost.

I must also mention that there is a heavy reliance on de-aging technology that allows Tom Hanks and Robin Wright to play their characters from 18-years-old until old age. This technology is terrible. Hanks, in particular, does not look young enough to play his character. He never does. It’s distracting and unintentionally hilarious. It makes their acting seem particularly bad, which is already too stagey because the camera is fixed in one position like it’s a play. Ugh!

I feel like I’m veering off into a rant. Suffice it to say, this movie has a potentially interesting idea in how to shoot a movie, but what happens in front of the camera is not interesting enough to sustain the “novelty” of this filmmaking device. It fails to make its theme have any impactful as the movie is both heavy-handed and cavalier.

Ultimately, Here is a collection of stories held together by an interesting filmmaking technique. The theme of the movie has potential to be impactful, but it comes across as haphazard, random and bland. Everything in this movie becomes so distracting and laughable that you can’t really take it seriously. Tom Hanks as an 18-year-old using de-aging visual effects is a big fail. You can skip this one in the theater and it may not even be worth it on streaming, but here is one popped kernel for the effort.