To quote Oscar Wilde; “It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done”…

With a loaded ensemble, a creative team with a strong record and a fascinating premise; on paper Here should have been the adult movie home run of the holiday season.  Rather it’s a dull, insipid mess of a narrative that really doesn’t go anywhere despite being wrapped in a high gloss sheen.

From the reunited director, writer, and stars of Forrest Gump, 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.

It is generally assumed that as a critic that I am at heart just a cranky miserable bastard but as my late mother always taught me that if I can’t at least say one thing nice….then I shouldn’t say anything nice at all.  In that spirit, here we go…

For all its time hopping, effects laden scenarios; the visuals and production design in Here is really first rate and actually does offer a solid decent entry into this narrative experience trying to give us some optimism about the idea.  Sadly after that is where the film falls off the cliff.

Keeping the film in the same place would have worked for twenty or thirty minutes and would have allowed us to overlook the digital smoothing of our two leads in Tom Hanks and Robin Wright but it all came off as very repetitive and tedious.  Even as we jump in time and see other actors like Michelle Dockery and Keith Bartlett, the focus of this journey through time in one place focuses on Hanks, Wright, Kelly Reilly and Paul Bettany.

But no one grows, Hanks is emotionally stunted as Richard, never leaving the house he grew up in, Wright is the muted and trapped house wife of the time while Paul Bettany tries to chew the scenery as Hanks’ father who shouts all the time due to hearing loss during the war and Kelly Reilly who commands the screen in something like Yellowstone is so forgettable here that it’s actually a little offensive.

This reuniting of the Forrest Gump dream team must have read great on paper but for a movie that is trying to encapsulate the fragility about the passage of time, it actually never goes anywhere and that’s what makes it not only one of the most aggravating cinematic experiences but also one of the genuinely dullest things put to screen in recent memory.

Ultimately, Here got off the ground because of the pedigree of all involved which in this business of show, happens from time to time, and while it won’t bury anyone involved, it’s really a collectively sad misstep from a group of artists who’ve given us better in the past.