Review: Here
Joy, Hope, Loss, Love, Life Happens...
INTRODUCTION
This is a quick review of the newly released film Here. Keep in mind this is but one of the many movies I watch every year, and that whatever initial grade I come up for this film could change for better or worse with time. To better keep up to date with both my thoughts on other movies and if my feelings on this film changed, follow me on Letterboxd.
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THE PLOT
Via Letterboxd: An odyssey through time and memory, centered around a place in New England where - from wilderness, and then, later, from a home - love, loss, struggle, hope, and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
QUICK REVIEW
There was a time when Robert Zemeckis stood alongside Steven Spielberg in the realm of great, big-budget escapism. This is the man who brought us the Back to the Future trilogy, Castaway, Contact, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the Best Picture-winning Forrest Gump, among other iconic classics. But lately, especially in the 2020s, he seems to have lost his magic touch. His adaptation of The Witches fell far short of the previous film version, and his live-action remake of Disney's Pinocchio was a well-meaning mess.
There was hope, though, that his current slump might end with Here, an adaptation of the highly regarded (and thought unfilmable) graphic novel. In fact, I even had the movie on my Best Picture prediction board until the most recent update.
Then the trailer hit. The clunky de-aging and special effects turned the movie into an overnight meme, and I faced a wave of negative reactions to my optimistic tweets suggesting that the film might still be an awards contender if it resonated with audiences. I do wonder if the movie lost any chance at a fair critical reception once that trailer dropped; it's not unusual in film criticism these days for certain opinions to solidify before a film is even seen. However, the audience scores haven't been great either, so the negative reception likely can't be attributed solely to a disconnect between critics and moviegoers.
Going into my screening of Here, I expected to feel underwhelmed but not to dislike it as much as others seemed to. In the end, I actually liked it a bit more than I expected, though I am still keenly aware of its flaws.
The film’s choice to jump back and forth through time can easily confuse viewers, and the editing doesn’t always serve Zemeckis's vision effectively. The pacing, at times, makes the film feel like it’s spinning in circles. The dialogue is also clunky; right from the opening lines, it didn’t feel like real people talking to one another so much as written dialogue for people to say aloud on stage. And yes, the de-aging and visual effects aren't the best showcase for the technologies presented. The film attempts an interesting experiment by showing events only from a fixed camera perspective, and I was pleasantly surprised such a feat didn’t become bothersome for me, but it’s screenplay risks losing chunks of its audience with the pacing and dialogue.
All that said, despite its flaws, I genuinely liked Here - to a point. I'd even call it the best Zemeckis film in years, though admittedly, that obviously isn't a particularly high bar to clear. While the time shifts could be jarring, I was invested in the characters' stories, especially the main plotline, which took a turn towards the end that genuinely moved me and got a tear out of me when the final scene hit.
In the end, Here has clear flaws and won’t work for everyone. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t engaged enough to find satisfaction in its finale. It’s the kind of movie I’d be very careful on who to recommend it to, and it won’t be the movie that gets Zemeckis back on the awards scene’s red carpets; but if it manages to catch your attention, it will do the job for its ninety-plus minutes of runtime. I initially give the movie a straight up B - just a plain B, not a B- or a B+, just a B.
INITIAL GRADING
