Robert Zemeckis’s career has been built on gimmicks, usually of the technical kind but also conceptual ones. Though most of the attention focused on his latest has to do with the extensive use of de-ageing/ageing AI software and the curious deployment of picture-within-picture devices for the purpose of scene changes, the main gimmick is promotional: Reassembling the cast and crew responsible for Zemeckis’s most famous project, Forrest Gump, on the occasion of its 30th anniversary, to once again celebrate American boomer exceptionalism as a historical given. The entire movie is set up to depict a certain space in the universe over the course of millennia, though the vast bulk of the film’s running time covers mid-20th century Pennsylvania, specifically the living room of a suburban house built in 1900 that is across the street from the original home of Benjamin Franklin’s illegitimate son, which has become a memorial. From this vantage point we sample the lives of the various families who occupied the living room over the course of a hundred years, including a budding aviator and his nervous wife, the randy couple who invented the La-Z-Boy recliner, a post-millennial Black couple and their son, and, most extensively, three generations of the Youngs: a WWII veteran, his frustrated artist son and put-upon wife, and the son’s own children, all living in the same house.

This last subplot stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as the second generation scions, Richard and Margaret, who are stuck in the house their entire married life with Richard’s parents, the alcoholic Al (Paul Bettany) and passive Rose (Kelly Reilly), due to post-60s economic stagnation. Though I haven’t read the graphic novel upon which Here was based, I would say Zemeckis missed a major opportunity to say something interestng and pointed about how Boomers were given all the resources and advantages to outperform the Greatest Generation and blew it by embracing capitalist consumerism in a death grip. Mostly what’s offered up are cliches—Richard abandons his draftsmanship talents for a career in insurance, Margaret crawls toward spiritual despair on having missed out on life (exemplified by “never seeing Paris”) because of her obligations as wife and mother—presented in a garishly theatrical way, complete with over-extended declamatory dialogue that is meant to carry all the way to the audience sitting up there in the top balcony. And because this main plot is punctuated with time-slipping asides to the other family stories over the century there’s no dramatic buildup. The hackneyed humdrum nature of the storytelling exacerbates the lack of flow, leaving only the technical flash to engage interest.

How much more engaging the movie might have been if the details, like the aviator wife’s involvement in the nascent sufragette movement, or the Black couple’s concern for their son’s welfare in a decidedly white environment, were elaborated upon, thus giving us more to chew on than the usual parade of pop music nostalgia and stumblings toward sexual awakening. I’m not necessarily one of those moviegoers whose memory of Forrest Gump is overwhelmed by revulsion, but Here makes the same miscalculations for the same tired reasons, and I wonder who still cares for this kind of showy but empty demonstration of cinematic wherewithal.

Opens April 4 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Kino Cinema Shinjuku (03-5315-0978), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Here home page in Japanese

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