Robert Zemeckis’ The latest film is insanely ambitious, starting with the dinosaurs and ending in the present with the Roomba. But it’s only stuck in one place.

“Here” reunites Zemeckis, screenwriter Eric Roth and actors Tom Hanks And Robin Wright who cooperated “Forrest Gump.” This time they don’t tell the larger-than-life story of a man moving through time; they tell the age-old story of a living room and all the different people who lived there.

In this living room we see a wedding, a death, a birth, a marriage being tested, a funeral, lots of vacuuming, lots of birthdays, Christmas and Thanksgiving, some sex, adults getting drunk and Jazzercise.

Zemeckis places the camera at a fixed angle, without moving, for the entire 105-minute film duration. After a while it’s not so strange – every shot and vignette bursts with life – but there’s a nagging feeling that we’re in some kind of cinematic experiment, as if we’re testing an audience on how long they’ll watch old security camera footage.

The camera may not move, but the eras do: they melt back and forth in time, from prehistory to the 18th century, to the 1940s, back to hunter-gatherer times and then to the 1940s. 60s and 70s, before reaching the early 20th century. It starts and ends in 2022.

Hanks and Wright are the backbone of the film, as Richard and Margaret. In dozens of small scenes we see him growing up as a boy in the house and falling in love with Margaret, getting married, moving in with her, having a baby and inheriting everything. Whether they survive as a couple is not guaranteed.

Zemeckis is a filmmaker known for incorporating the latest technology and this time it’s de-aging as a visual effect, essentially transforming 68-year-old Hanks into what he looked like during the filming of ‘Splash’. It’s a lot of work, often clumsy, and Zemeckis is lost in the uncanny valley, trying to tell a very human story about what unites us, but changing the actors so much that the human connection is lost. If you look closely, you’ll see that cigarette smoke gets into one character, but never comes out.

Other roles include Richard’s parents – played brilliantly by Paul Bethany and Kelly Reilly – and some unrelated people: a cheerful couple who lived in the house from 1925 to 1944, and a less pleasant couple in the early 20th century. There’s a 17th century Native couple frolicking in the space that will take over the living room in 300 years, and another family driving through the house in 2020 amid the pandemic.

If that’s not enough, we have a performance by Benjamin Franklin. Why Benjamin Franklin? It is connected to the house across the street. It is not entirely clear what he adds. The film could use fewer Founding Fathers and cute accents like hummingbirds.

We watch the living room as a TV is added — the Beatles’ appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” leads to “CHiPs” — and the vehicles outside range from horses to Model Ts to sedans. The house goes from $3,400 just after World War II to $1 million today and the fashions range from Victorian heeled boots to teased hair and American flag shirts.

“Here” – based on Richard McGuire’s graphic novel – is best when events at different points in time are connected – like when a roof starts leaking in one era only to dissolve into the breaking of another’s waters. pregnant woman in another era. Or when there is flu in 1918 and we later see the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

One theme touched upon, but which could have been amplified, is the impact of downsizing and economic dislocations on the psyche, with Richard’s father one day in full Willy Loman mode, sobbing after his dismissal: ‘They shrunk me .’ Dreams deferred are another thing, but there’s not enough time for that when you’re getting crazy visits from Benjamin Franklin. And while embracing Native Americans is inclusive, the scenes add little to the story.

“Here” fails to connect all these centuries of human experience, other than to celebrate the human experience in all its messiness, triumph and sadness. If these walls could talk, most characters would be happiest when they’re not in this living room. Perhaps the strongest theme is expressed by one character who laments, “Time just went by.”

Zemeckis nicely mimics the graphic novel’s use of squares within the frame, which provide glimpses of what’s happening in different eras – like small time travel devices – and kudos to Jesse Goldsmith for fantastic editing work.

But one visual trick sums up the film: It’s supposed to be the story of a real wood-and-brick house, but it was filmed at Sony’s studio complex in Culver City, California. The main character is fake. ‘Here’ is nowhere.

“Here,” a Sony Pictures release that opens in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 for “thematic material, some suggestive material, brief strong language and smoking.” Running time: 105 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.