Film Review: HERE (2024): Robert Zemeckis’ Stagey Drama is an Ordinary Look at Ordinary People

Here Review

Here (2024) Film Review, a movie directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Eric Roth, Robert Zemeckis and Richard McGuire and starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly, Finn Guegan, Callum Macreadie, Lauren McQueen, Billie Gadsdon, Beau Gadsdon, Harry Marcus, Diego Scott, Albie Salter, Zsa Zsa Zemeckis, Michelle Dockery, David Flynn and Ophelia Lovibond.

Robert Zemeckis brings an ambitious, but misguided, effort to the screen with his latest film, Here. Taking place almost exclusively in a living room within a house, Here is a movie that believes it can tell an effective story of many lives through conversations and interactions in a single setting. It simply cannot. More happens outside of people’s homes than within it in many circumstances and, in this particular case, Zemeckis fails to make us believe that the most important things going on in these people’s lives are what happens “here” in the living room.

Yes, Here shows the differences in the time periods that each of the characters inhabit but we need larger glimpses of the character’s full lives to make them effective characterizations. Instead, it feels like the movie shows partial pieces of lives that are probably more insignificant than the aspects that occur away from the house. OK, children are conceived in the house, which is a major event, I suppose, but all the small details regarding mundane situations would have been better conveyed through leaving the house in addition to the scenes it presents in the house itself. However, then, there’d be no movie.

Tom Hanks plays Richard and Robin Wright is Margaret. They were madly in love once when they were young and naive. Richard thought he’d be an artist before settling into a career selling insurance while Margaret seems to think it would have been easy for the pair to get a place together when she ends up pregnant with their daughter, Vanessa (Zsa Zsa Zemeckis), at a young age. At the end, the film would like us to believe that Margaret’s life was so greatly impacted by the time she spent in the living room within the film’s featured house. That ends up feeling unlikely, though, since she strays from the life which is found there to seek a “better” life traveling, etc. The movie wants to make a case for the deep meaning of living in a home, but it seems to indirectly state the only way to be happy is by leaving it.

Now, in the movie’s defense, there are plenty of situations to keep the viewer’s mind off the mundane aspects of the movie’s plot or what passes for one. I liked the couple who inhabit the house at one point played by David Flynn and Ophelia Lovibond. Though they look mismatched in the film, somehow the movie ends up making them feel charismatic and believable as a couple. The Flynn character invents a reclining chair while making whoopie with the Lovibond character who he met when he followed her home one day. These characters are sweet and lovable, for the most part anyway. They’re really cute, nothing more, nothing less.

When the movie is dialogue-driven, that dialogue is so corny that it feels cliched beyond a reasonable doubt. All the old famous expressions the writers could think of are tossed into the movie which makes it feel even more ordinary than it had to be. Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly as Hanks’ character’s parents are watchable performers with a script that does them many injustices by not writing smarter words for them to recite. Yes, they’re normal people but the movie wants to make us believe they’re more intelligent than that but doesn’t follow through. They’re just stuck in circumstances beyond their control, but the dialogue suggests otherwise.

Richard seems to be a relatable character, but the movie (and Hanks) doesn’t really let us inside the character, except to see how unfair a hand he was dealt in life. Michelle Dockery as Pauline, one of the earlier residents, is good but she, too, gets lost in the shuffle as the film oddly focuses mostly on Richard and Margaret.

Here even goes way back in time to when the house came to be and deals with dinosaurs in the movie’s opening sequence. Look, this is a very ambitious premise, and I’ll give it that but in a play set in a single setting, the action is usually driven by the plot and there’s not much of one in Zemeckis’ new film, unfortunately.

Hanks and Wright have reunited together for this film 30 years after Forrest Gump playing characters whose relationship got the raw end of the stick for the second time. It’s nice to see them working again regardless of the lackluster quality of their performances. In the end, Here is a tearjerker that could affect you while watching it until you realize all the points I’ve laid out in this review and discover Zemeckis was trying to pull the wool over our eyes the whole time this go-around. However, the movie has its moments and it’s hard to hate it, for whatever reason. It has an earnestness about it that is rare but also unnecessary for a film that doesn’t go the route it should have. It’s a close call but it’s ultimately a miss.

Rating: 6/10

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