I admit that joke is pretty clunky. But this film, which Robert Zemeckis and Eric Roth adapted from Richard McGuire's comic strip, and eventual graphic novel, is easy to describe. Let me prove it Here.
So, the gimmick Here is that we see time go by at a fixed vantage point. We see time progress - or regress - within pop-up comic book panels which are soon joined by the rest of the scene. At one point, we see a character in one panel fade-in to join a conversation already in progress. It's surprisingly good how these disconnected events blend together, especially when we see beyond the living room where most of the movie is set.
What do we have Here? During the movie, we see the dinosaurs go extinct and the Ice Age, a Native American couple living their lives, and the estate of Benjamin Franklin's son, William (Daniel Betts). The main house is first owned by John & Pauline Harter (Gwilym Lee & Michelle Dockery), and then by Leo Beekman (David Fynn), the inventor of the La-Z Boy chair. For most of the movie, it is owned by two generations of the Young family, beginning with WWII vet Al (Paul Bettany) and his wife, Rose (Kelly Reilly).
Their son, Richard (Tom Hanks), stays Here when his high-school sweetheart, Margaret (Robin Wright), gets pregnant. He's forced to give up his artistic dreams and follow Al as an insurance salesman. He promises Margaret a new house, even drawing up sketches and blueprints, but his financial worries squash those promises. This eventually drives them apart. Eventually.
Besides the pop-up panels, the film looks pretty good, overall. Hanks and Wright are aged throughout the film by a surprisingly convincing digital makeup job. It ought to be distracting, especially since the high-school aged Richard and Margaret don't look like high-schoolers. But it took me a short bit to see them as people, rather than visual effects. The same treatment might have been done to Bettany and Reilly, but that hasn't been publicized as much as the leads' digital makeup. The actual makeup used to age the stars past their actual ages is also well done. All the living room's arrangements, as visualized by production designer Ashley Lamont, are also appealing.
Who do we have Here? Leo and his wife, Stella (Ophelia Lovibond), are quite fun to watch. By contrast, Al was initially hard to like due to his irritability; he even gets annoyed at his granddaughter at one point. It's still kind of funny when he can't comprehend how to work a camera beyond its plug. Thankfully, he mellows out with age and is quite sympathetic when he is eventually widowed. It's quite easy to sympathize with Richard and Margaret's troubles as they gradually grow apart. Before them, the Harters have their own issues, thanks to John's flyboy attitude, but his death - by the flu - is still tragic.
I'll devote this paragraph to a few other names. The Native American couple (Joel Oulette & Dannie McCallum) live their lives without subtitles, but it's still easy to get invested in them. After the Youngs comes the Harris family - Devon, Helen and their son Justin (Nicholas Pinnock, Nikki Amuka-Bird & Cache Vanderpuye). They're pretty good people, but their housekeeper, Raquel (Anya Marco Harris), is barely there before she dies off-screen. Ted & Virginia (Tony Way & Jemima Rooper) get less screentime before he has a fatal heart attack in the living room. At least he dies laughing at a very funny morbid joke. Richard's siblings, meanwhile, are completely lost in the shuffle.
It's a movie that will make you think about the course of your own life. As such, it can get emotionally overwhelming as you see all the stuff that happens Here. It's hard to keep it together when Alan Silvestri's melodramatic score accentuates the deaths, medical & marriage crises, births, and more. It's especially strong in the ending, where cinematographer Don Burgess finally lets the camera move. I'll leave it to you to see the circumstances of that ending for yourself. I won't blame you if you seek something lighter immediately after you watch it. I wonder if the graphic novel is any less overwhelming.
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