The big appeal of “Here” is director Robert Zemeckis’ recasting with his “Forrest Gump” writer, Eric Roth, and that film’s stars, Robin Wright and Tom Hanks. They now play Margaret and Richard, a married couple living in Richard’s parental home. Structurally, they are the main players here. But the story of Richard’s parents, Al (Paul Bettany) and Rose (Kelly Reilly), becomes one of many subplots adapted from Richard McGuire’s graphic novel as he grows up.

The film constantly jumps back and forth in time, sometimes superimposing scenes from previous timelines on top of footage already on screen. In this fixed frame, Zemeckis adds a cast of characters, mostly white. When a black, Latina, or Native American character appears, he or she is so poorly written that they are essentially props.

Other subplots include characters such as Lee Beckman, the fictional inventor of the La-Z-Boy recliner (David Fynn), and his supportive pin-up model wife Stella (Ophelia Lovibond); a 1920s aviator named John Harter (Gwilym Lee) and his plane-terrified wife, Pauline (Michelle Dockery); and Benjamin Franklin and his son William (Daniel Betts). Franklin’s timeline precedes that of the house, so his story takes place on a dirt road.

We also meet the Native Americans who lived on the land on which Richard’s house was eventually built. But they don’t even have a name; they exist mainly to have sex in the wilderness and to leave jewelry that can be found under Hanks’ house. That discovery reminded me of Tobe Hooper’s 1982 horror masterpiece, “Poltergeist” – an unintentional and unfortunate coincidence.

Lest I forget the Black family and their Latina girl, who move into the house after Richard sells it, we learn so little about them that she seem to exist solely to suffer or die. The film’s use of the talk black parents give their children about dealing with the police is so callously applied here that I was seething with anger long after the credits had rolled over this utter embarrassment of a film.

Before we get to any of those people, “Here” opens with a montage that shows the passage of time from the film’s fixed perspective. As Alan Silvestri’s syrupy score builds, Zemeckis gives us dinosaurs and the Ice Age and every other pre-human spectacle the F/X team can put on screen. It’s meant to be profound, but again, it’s unintentionally hilarious — a bad parody of Terrence Malick’s similar sequence from 2011’s “The Tree of Life.”

As we bounce back and forth through time like an out-of-control pinball, young Richard is played by several actors before Hanks takes on the role when the character is in high school. Keep in mind that Hanks is 68 years old, so he needs to be “de-aged” by CGI. The result makes the actor look as if he were made of plastic; it’s impossible to watch him without a sickening, eerie valley feeling.

Considering that Hanks has several younger relatives who look a lot like him (including his son Truman, who nicely played the young adult version of his character in 2022’s “A Man Called Otto”), there was no reason for Zemeckis to go this route to follow. Even in good films like ‘The Irishman’ this aging process looks terrible. The face may be 17, but the body still moves like it’s 68.

Wright fares no better; her outdated CGI iteration looks like a mannequin that escaped from a shop window. Are actors these days so vain that they feel like they have to control every scene, regardless of the age of their characters? Are filmmakers so deluded into thinking we’ll buy a rubber-faced computer effect?

For God’s sake, Hollywood, please stop using this hellish aging technique.

I’m going to rant, but the aging process is the least of this film’s huge problems. Each performer has been tasked with overacting as they run through virtually every dramatic plot device you can think of. Zemeckis and Roth’s script tackles alcoholism, infidelity, dementia, post-traumatic stress disorder caused by war, illness, failed businesses, divorce, dreams deferred and the bitter taste of failure.

Combine the broad acting and cliché-ridden screenplay with the fixed-frame format, and “Here” comes off like a bad sitcom, or worse, like a school play made by a bunch of fifth-graders who decided to take on Eugene O’Neill . or ‘Death of a Salesman’. Now that I think about it, those kids would put on a better, more entertaining show.

½★

HERE

Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Written by Zemeckis and Eric Roth, based on the graphic novel by Richard McGuire. Starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly, David Fynn, Ophelia Lovibond, Gwilym Lee, Michelle Dockery, Daniel Betts. At AMC Boston Common, AMC Causeway, Suburbs. 105 minutes. PG-13 (some F words)

An earlier version of this review misstated actor Tom Hanks’ age. He’s 68.

Odie Henderson is a film critic for the Boston Globe.