17/39

Based on the comic book “Here” by Richard McGuire

Scenario

A generational story about families and the special place they live, where they share love, loss, laughter, and life. First published as a strip in the comic magazine “Raw” in 1989, the comic was expanded into a 300-page graphic novel in 2014. Richard’s father names several towns early in the film that he says are on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, when in reality they are towns along Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania, which wasn’t even built yet.

Concerto for Clarinet, Pts

[from trailer] Richard: You know, if you wanted to, you could spend the rest of the night here. Margaret: I could spend the rest of my life here. Includes They Stooge to Conga (1943).

But after watching it, I was disappointed with the film

1 and 2Written by Artie ShawPerformed by Artie Shaw and His OrchestraCourtesy of RCA RecordsCourtesy of Sony Music Entertainment. I was excited to see this film last night at the AFI Film Festival. Robert Zemeckis, of Back to the Future fame, loves to use technology to illustrate his films.

I’ve seen that before

In this film, he uses various picture-in-picture overlays to show what happened at different times in the same place (e.g., “Here” – somewhere in New England or Pennsylvania). He also uses rejuvenation techniques to turn Tom Hanks and Robin Wright into teenagers (done much better than Scorsese’s The Irishman). However, these plus points don’t make up for a mediocre and predictable story that focuses on Tom Hanks’ (and Robin Wright’s) initially exuberant youth being destroyed by the realities of adult life.

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Parallel stories of Benjamin Franklin’s son, a Native American, an early aviator, the alleged inventor of the Laz-e-Boy, and a black family all inhabiting the same place at different times ultimately serve as more of a distraction than an enrichment. The gimmicky use of panels eventually becomes tiresome, as does the use of AI to create ancient times and animals. The main cast (Hanks, Wright, Bettany and Reilly) are all excellent, but I just wish they had been given a better script to work with.