Here (2024)

[chitowngirl]

From the reunited director, writer, and stars of Forrest Gump (1994), Here is an original film about multiple families and a special place they inhabit. The story travels through generations, capturing the human experience in its purest form. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Eric Roth and Zemeckis and told much in the style of the acclaimed graphic novel by Richard McGuire on which it is based, Tom Hanks and Robin Wright star in tale of love, loss, laughter and life, all of which happen right Here.

[Cress]

I saw it twice and enjoyed it. I never read the comic, but I liked the way individual panels on the screen show glimpses of the same location, but in different time periods. The main plot is about the Young family from 1945 or so to present day, but we get scenes of other people too, such as a Native American couple, Benjamin Franklin's estranged family, an inventor and his girlfriend, and a Black family with a housekeeper who dies during the pandemic.

Watching these couples age over the years and go through emotional hardships was touching to me, though I've read critics' reviews saying that it's corny or trite. Whatever. I liked it.

[Spartan Girl]

Finally watched it on Netflix. The nonlinear narrative was a bit much sometimes, but I was able to keep up for the most part. And it was pretty sad.

[Bastet]

While I cried in spite of myself at the final scene, this was one of the stupidest films I've ever endured. 

Oh.my.gods.  I'd never heard of it, but it came up as a Netflix recommendation, a Forrest Gump reunion, and I couldn't get back to sleep anyway, so why not?  Except Tom Hanks and Robin Wright play the characters throughout the entire timeline, no different actors playing the younger versions of themselves, which means at one point they play HIGH SCHOOLERS. Their parents/in-laws are played by the same actors throughout, too -- actors 20 years younger than Hanks and Wright! It's ridiculous.

I might get past that, but there's nothing to redeem it; it's unspeakably ham-fisted on every level -- writing, acting, and directing. (Yes, Forrest Gump was heavy-handed, so it doesn't sound surprising, but this is on another level entirely.) It's one of those movies I only finished because I just couldn't believe something so bad had been made by famous people and had to keep watching to see how much worse it could get.

Rubbish, with a few good bits. 

[krankydoodle]

I wish they'd kept the alternate ending, which shows the house abandoned and rotting some unspecified time in the future when floods come in and wash away everything, leaving just the skeletal remains of the house across the street. It's not totally bleak because then the water gradually recedes to the point where vegetation comes back and I think there were birds calling, so at least something survives.

I can't say I liked the movie, but I thought it was an interesting experiment.