Life flashes before our eyes in Robert Zemeckis' latest drama-comedy, where millions of years of evolution lead to a living room somewhere in North America, a miniscule portion of the world that becomes the scene of human history and home to generations of people trying to fulfil their dreams. Here and now, is the message, to live in the moment, as life is far too short to waste it on pointless anxiety. In other words, it's a film with very big ambitions... but with very few surprises.
Here is a sentimental story we've seen many times, where the framing is the main attraction. It's a fun experiment to witness entire lives from a single angle, with transitions taking place in the form of cut-in frames from different eras, like windows into another life. The comic book on which the film is based did the same to show how ephemeral life is: in the film, they act as transitions to the next story. Some of these transitions are clever, while others fall flat, especially when the majority of the stories are not engaging. It's not enough to constantly show the de-aged faces of Tom Hanks and Robin Wright.
One of the problems is that many of the film's stories become loose ends that quickly lose their connection to the film's common thread. For example, the story of the pilot's wife is quickly forgotten and the side story of Benjamin Franklin's family could just as easily have been cut out as it doesn't really add much to the overall story. There's a lot to get through, but in the end, you're still most invested in the story involving Hanks and Wright, as Zemeckis spends the most time on their dynamic and their worldviews. There are some effective scenes here, but as soon as some emotion starts to boil up, it's quickly waved away by flat dialogue or ugly digital effects, like when a CGI hummingbird tries to tie the stories together.
It contributes to a uneven film that never really manages to move the viewer. As I said, I appreciate the framing very much, but it doesn't feel like its potential is fully utilised either. The whole thing is just too artificial, and I don't just mean the computer effects. The emotions are missing and never really bubble up to the surface, because the interwoven conventional stories are never really lifted by the "still camera". There's a lot Zemeckis wants to say with Here and how short life is, but you will definitely want your life to be cut short if you spend the time and money to see Here.