PREMISE
A generational story about families and the special place they inhabit, sharing in love, loss, laughter, and life.
THE GOOD STUFF
ROBBIE ZEMECKIS – So the gimmick of this film is that it takes place in one spot throughout history. There is no zooming in on anything, panning over to anything, or cutting away at anything in any conventional way. Perhaps it is simply a testament to the creativity of Robert Zemeckis, who effortlessly conveys the passing of multiple generations without slowing down the film’s pace. The gimmick has flaws (and I’ll get to that in a second ). Still, it is imposing that this movie moves at a brisk 110 minutes and doesn’t necessarily feel overstuffed because of the storytelling limitations of the gimmick.
Not that anybody ever questioned the greatness of Robert Zemeckis, but he’s been highly underappreciated for a very long time now, and he’s one of maybe three or four directors in the game that can pull this gimmick off in the way that it’s pulled off here.
THE MAIN STORYLINE—This movie could have been probably 85 minutes long. It could have focused on just the main storyline (of a nuclear family who all give up on their dreams to make ends meet and the emotional toll that takes on everybody over the course of time), and that really would have been enough.
Everybody is excellent here. Hanks and Robin Wright might not be headed for the Oscar stage, given the competition that’s out there already, but they definitely live up to their reputations in this film. Paul Bettany, who may have one of his best career performances, is also a part of this.
THE BAD STUFF
YOUTHFUL TECHNOLOGY – Robert Zemeckis is certainly not afraid of trying something new. Granted, he wasn’t the first guy to use motion capture animation, but he is the director of one of the first-ever full-length motion pictures that is entirely made of motion capture animation (The polar Express). He is also the director of the first-ever full-length motion picture that is entirely composed of optical compositing animation all the way back in 1989 (WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT). It doesn’t surprise me that he would use de-aging technology, but surprisingly, he is a man who has not perfected it enough to put it in a motion picture without it appearing a bit… iffy.
I’m not the most technologically savvy guy in the world, but I do not see the advancement in making older actors look younger. I don’t see a difference in how the de-aging technology is used here compared to a film like THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, which came out six years ago.
This movie tries to gaslight you into thinking that the de-aged version of Tom Hanks is 18 years old. However, the technology makes him look similar to the movie BIG in 1988. He was 31 years old then, and his voice sounds exactly the same throughout the film.
THE UGLY STUFF
UNDERDEVELOPED STORYTELLING—Using this gimmick to tell the story of the house where the main story is set would have been ambitious enough. You could have cut twenty solid minutes off of the film and still be left with a good enough experience. But the ambition is quite possibly too much.
This is not the movie that wants to tell the house’s story. This movie literally wants to tell you the story of the spot where the camera is set…. since the beginning of time. And because of that, we are left with all of these useless, aimless, and patchy-as-hell subplots to cover these periods of time. Stories that are, I guess, supposed to be connected to the main storyline going on, but only metaphorically. And yes, this does work with one of the four subplots, but the other ones are their own stories entirely told in a checkered order that come at very awkward points of the main storyline.
The main storyline will go along swimmingly, and then suddenly, you’re thrown back into the dinosaur ages. There’s a Ben Franklin subplot. Two dialogue-free Native Americans show up. The inventor of the Lay-Z-Boy shows up, and the man who invented the airplane shows up. A random African-American family just shows up. All these subplots together probably make up 20 minutes of storytime. Not to say that they’re poorly done. It’s worse than that. They’re all well done and deserved more time. This is a movie that very much might have served well as a miniseries than an actual film.
**************
Because of the chronological scope of this movie, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a film I hate with every fiber of my being, the 2011 “experimental coming-of-age drama” called THE TREE OF LIFE. A movie with the same time leaping kind of narrative is meant to have the audience either symbolically or metaphorically connect the main storyline with what seem to be unrelated events. The tree of life is Hall of Fame cinematic arthouse film snob masturbatorianism. In its metaphors and symbologies, it overexplains everything literally and is glacially paced. F*** this movie.
The biggest compliment I can give to HERE is that it makes me hate the tree of life that much more. Outside of actually trying to explain the birth of the universe, this film hits all of the points that the tree of Life did, has better performances, is paced very well, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s not a movie trying to talk down to its audience. It wants you to understand everything that went on in the story (well, the main story, at least), and it’s not even remotely close to being as pretentious.
Believe me, that’s as big a compliment as I can give to this movie.
HERE is in theaters now
