You know those long commercials that sometimes run during the holidays that offer vague, sentimental bromides about love, family, and brotherhood brought to you by soulless corporations as part of their annual end-of-year promotion: “We’re good, right?” campaigns? Imagine that stretches to 104 minutes, and you have Robert Zemeckis’ “Here,” a hollow and vapid paean to the entire human experience that has all the depth and profundity of a generic greeting card. The result is a film that is not only bad, but also baffling: a film that processes almost every emotion imaginable without generating any real emotion of its own.

The conceit of the film, based on the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, is to put the camera in one place to illustrate all the events that have occurred in that place throughout history, using frames-within -the-frame to transition from one point in time to another. At first it’s open land that gives us glimpses of everything from the dinosaurs dying to the Native Americans going about their lives to the home of Benjamin Franklin’s estranged son. As the 20th century dawns, the location becomes the living room of a duplex house and we begin to observe the lives of some of those who live within its walls. Set in the 1910s, we witness Pauline Harter (Michelle Dockery) constantly worrying about the possibility that her risk-taking husband John (Gwilym Lee) will die in the newfangled plane that seems to be the sole focus of his life. In the 1940s, on the other hand, we observe a horny but happy couple (David Flynn and Ophelia Lovibond) as they develop one of the greatest creations of the century.

For about 60 years and most of the film’s duration (which starts to even out after a while), the Young family owns the house. It was purchased shortly after the end of World War II by returning soldier Al Young (Paul Bettany) and his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly), who went on to raise three children there. One of them grows up to become Richard (Tom Hanks), a young man who dreams of becoming an artist but falls to the wayside when he beats up his high school sweetheart Margaret (Robin Wright). They get married and Richard takes a job. selling insurance to provide for his family. Because finances are tight, they are forced to move in with Richard’s parents, and although there is always talk of having their own place, Richard never seems willing to pull the trigger. As the years pass, we watch the Youngs as they observe both historical events throughout history and the kinds of everyday things we all experience: birth, death, love, depression, infidelity, marital dissatisfaction, dealing with aging parents and something like that – all from this one fixed position.

With “Here,” Robert Zemeckis is clearly trying to evoke memories of “Forrest Gump” by reuniting key members of that film’s creative team — the package also includes screenwriter Eric Roth, composer Alan Silvestri and cinematographer Don Burgess — in the hopes that lightning strikes twice. What it doesn’t have, however, are two things that made the film work: a compelling story and a darkly humorous undertone that helped keep the film from being overwhelmed by sentimentality. Other than the 1940s couple, who have a weird energy that provides the film’s only real spark of life, none of the house’s inhabitants or their experiences are particularly interesting. When the events threaten to develop a certain interest or tension, they are more often than not undermined by clumsy transitions to another era to imply how we are all somehow connected – in perhaps the most awkward of these : a leaking roof. in the breaking of Margaret’s waters. Speaking of clumsy, the vignettes about the aforementioned Native Americans and the black family who live in the house after the Youngs are particularly jarring — though their presence initially suggests that the film might touch on more disturbing aspects of the human experience, it seems they end up just there to make sure it isn’t 100% lily white.

As for the formal concept and visual conceit that seem to have been Zemeckis’s main focuses, neither comes across particularly well. While the idea of ​​looking at all of history from one specific perspective could potentially yield interesting results on the pages of a graphic novel, where the images are static to begin with, this does not translate well into cinematic terms: key scenes are awkwardly manner presented. -staged shots, and after a while you have to wonder just how many births, deaths, sexual encounters, and dramatic revelations will take place in the very same location where the Youngs set the elaborate table for Thanksgiving dinner. Even more disastrous is the automated aging process that is used to make the various actors look younger (and ultimately older) than they already are. This process was criticized when Martin Scorsese used it in “The Irishman,” but at least there it was used sparingly. Here it is used all the time, and it never really works; too often the actors have a plasticine look that is both distracting (Wright especially suffers from this) and undermines the emotions the characters are trying to suggest.

‘Here’ is a work so tacky and so rushed in its attempts to move you that there comes a point where you find yourself thinking that the only thing Zemeckis hasn’t thrown into the mix is ​​a needle drop of ‘Our House’ . and then he goes and does exactly that. He can still be a compelling filmmaker when he wants to be (check out the great ‘Allied’). Yet here he is working with a project that seems designed to allow him to indulge in his worst habits, and he brings along fine actors like Hanks and Wright (for whom roughly half of her dialogue seems to be some kind of variation on how time flies) down with him. Spoiler alert! There is in fact one key moment in the film where the camera is moved; this turns out to be more than can be said for those of us in the audience.

This review was submitted from its premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival. It opens on November 1^st.