Movie Review: 'Here' is One of the Worst of 2024

Here

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Written by Eric Roth

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

Release Date November 1st, 2024

Published November 2nd, 2024

This stinks. There’s just no other way to say it. Here stinks. This bizarre failed experiment from bored director Robert Zemeckis is downright embarrassing in execution. The concept is that the whole movie unfolds in a single, stationary shot set in the corner of an all American baby boomer living room. Well, it’s also the corner of a forest, the driveway of Ben Franklin’s son’s home, and the place where the Lazy Boy was invented… for some reason. Randomness is one of a myriad of problems with Here.

Here stars Tom Hanks as Richard, leading an ensemble as the son of Paul Bettany's Al, a World War 2 vet who returns home and, with his wife, Rose, played by Kelly Reilly, buys a suburban tract home with his G.I Bill and settles in to raise a family. While Dad grows miserable and drunk, working as a salesman of unknown products, Mom raises their three kids, two sons and a daughter. The youngest son and daughter are not part of the story and get little to no characterization. Why are they here? Who knows.

The story proper, centers on Richard as the oldest son who falls in love with Margaret, played by Robin Wright, while in High School and gets her pregnant. Now he must defer his dream of being a graphic artist to help raise his family alongside his parents, all in this one suburban home. Richard takes a miserable sales job, just like dad, while Margaret gives up going to law school in favor of being a stay at home mom. Wright feels trapped in this house with her in-laws and longs for a home of her own that they will never get because the camera is stuck in the corner of this ugly, boring, suburban living room.

There are other characters randomly chucked in to break up the monotony of the family story. These characters are introduced via boxes that pop up on screen and reveal the home and this tract of land through time. We see poorly rendered dinosaurs run into the frame and run away followed by the meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs. Then it’s years of ice and snow that finally gives way to the first signs of human life. We see the house get built and the first family to live there. This family has a plane for some reason and the mom is worried that the dad of the family is going to crash and die. Why? Who knows. This story doesn’t matter to what little story there is in Here.

The next people to live in the house are a horny couple who dance and romance and the man invents the Lazy Boy. Why? Again we have no idea why this is here. I will say, Ophelia Lovibond and David Fynn play this Lazy Boy couple and they are the only people having any fun in Here and their random appearances are a welcome departure from the dreariness of the suburban family marching listlessly past well known moments in American history like stationary Forrest Gump's.

The film builds clumsily to a conclusion where Richard and Margaret visit this house long after they’ve moved away and have a heartwarming conversation about how happy they were living ‘Here.’ And to that I say, when? When were they ever happy? These people are miserable. All they ever do is sacrifice their happiness for their family and then get angry at each other for having given up everything for their family. Margaret, in particular, never has a happy moment until she leaves Richard and moves out of the house. Then she goes to Paris and we hear her call Hanks and say how happy she is while he remains trapped in this house like a cursed horror movie character.

You likely could make a cut of Here as a horror movie about how the camera is a monster who holds these people in this house against their will. The monster is the American dream and he’s a monster because it’s an unachievable goal that these people have been tricked by in order to hold them hostage on a hamster wheel of unfulfilling jobs and economic insecurity. The big reveal at the end is that these characters died in a house fire years ago and this house is their place in the afterlife where they are tormented by dreary jobs and the everyday tasks of cleaning, cooking, and spending time with resentful family members who blame each other for their lot in life.

Robert Zemeckis clearly believes that he’s making an inspirational drama that reflects the idyllic American suburbs of yore. But what he’s actually made is an embarrassing, overly sentimental and deeply misguided film. Here is a truly miserable movie populated by miserable characters, all while it tries to sell you the notion of nostalgia. It’s aiming for Norman Rockwell come-to-life but it lands somewhere between a lame community theater and the Hallmark Hall of Fame. A brilliant YouTube critic, Deep Focus Lens, put it best, comparing Here to a Thomas Kincade painting. Indeed, it’s a mass produced, lesser version of an original, made with all of the inspiration of someone who mass produces their art on plates sold to grannies on late night TV.

I loathe this movie. I was miserable from moment one to moment last. I had an inkling from the trailer that Here wasn’t going to be good but I was not prepared for just how miserable sitting through this movie would be. Tom Hanks needs to never work with Robert Zemeckis again. Something about Zemeckis flattens Hanks’ appeal and reduces his acting to broad, theatrical gestures and vocal affectations, like he swallowed Jimmy Stewart, all while saddling him with dimwitted dialogue consumed by the constant need to find a way to awkwardly signal where we are in time. One of our finest actors is left looking foolish under de-aging technology or deeply unconvincing makeup.

Poor Robin Wright is treated even worse than Hanks. Her character is destined to develop dementia and we know this because the script repeatedly has her mention how she keeps forgetting things. The movie shoehorns in moments for her to say she forgot where she lives or she forgot what she was doing before and so on and so forth. When she’s not forgetting things she’s just miserable. She’s mad to have given up on law school, she’s mad to have to stay with her in-laws and she’s mad at her husband for his being mad about not being an artist. Zemeckis’ vision of America is apparently a constantly deferred American dream that is also an inexorable march to the grave. Nostalgia! Am I right?

Find my archive of more than 20 years and more than 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Find my modern review archive on my Vocal profile, linked here. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. Follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. Listen to me talk about movies on the I Hate Critics movie Review Podcast. If you have enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my writing on Vocal. If you’d like to support my writing, you can do so by making a monthly pledge or by leaving a one time tip. Thanks!