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

Robert Zemeckis has an impressive resume as a director, at least up until ‘Flight’ in 2012, but it’s been downhill since and with his latest movie ‘Here’, he’s put in an entrant for the worst movie of the 22 he has directed to date (at least of those I’ve seen!). Based on a graphic novel, the movie takes place in a single spot of land from the dinosaur era to the present day, following the various inhabitants and people who pass through, with one static camera angle used for every single sequence (with the odd exception). It is a high concept drama that attempts to draw parallels between the lives of different people, while showcasing how the impact of change on a small bit of land can have such wide-reaching consequences for so many people. Emphasise on the word ‘attempts’.

Simply put, this movie does not work and a concept that may have worked well in the format of a graphic novel, does not remotely transfer well to the screen. It is narratively all over the place with the threads of different stories having very few thematic links or similarities, beyond the events taking place on the same spot, and by god this has to be the most blatantly saccharine and sentimental movie I’ve seen in a long time. You can literally feel the attempted emotional manipulation of the filmmakers working overtime on the audience, to the extent that it just doesn’t work and turns you off.

The cast is stellar on paper, led by a ‘Forrest Gump’ reunion of Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, who play Richard & Margaret Young, whose family are the primary focus of the movie. Using digital technology to age and de-age characters over the course of the movie, we follow Richard’s parents (Paul Bettany & Kelly Reilly), who buy the house in the post-WWII era and live there for many years before passing on to their son, and his subsequent family. We are supposed to care about their lives and be emotionally affected by the key moments in their family history that happen in this house and this particular room, from childbirth to happy memories with friends and family, to death and divorce, but it’s all rather inconsequential and lacks the punch to make you care.

‘Here’ is a terrible movie on pretty much every level, with its high concept premise and use of technology failing to deliver anything that remotely achieves what it sets out to do, and I was left perplexed at just how Zemeckis and a more than decent cast have produced something so impotent in every conceivable way.

Rating: 1/5

Directed By: Robert Zemeckis

Starring: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt18272208/