“Here” may be unlike any other film you have seen, a celebration of the life moments that can happen in one small spot on this great planet over time. The movie — in theaters now — also is notable for being a reunion of key players from 1994’s beloved, Academy Award-winning “Forrest Gump,” with stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, filmmaker Robert Zemeckis and writer Eric Roth together again. Disappointingly, neither of those highly appealing aspects is reason enough to recommend “Here,” which, despite some strengths, feels like a missed opportunity.
Based on Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel of the same name — it’s an extension of his comic strip dating to the end of the 1980s — “Here” is a nonlinear, revolving series of vignettes. The film begins in prehistoric times, the story’s all-important spot in the future United States seeing large insects and giant dinosaurs. Then come meteors, ice, plant life, indigenous people and, eventually, Colonial types, who dig a foundation for a modest house, lay bricks and begin to raise walls.
From there, we spend time with the men, women and children who will come to inhabit the home, located across from a much larger and historically significant house. They include its first occupants, John Harter (Gwilym Lee, “The Great”), who not long after the development of aviation has a passion for flying that terrifies his wife, Pauline (Michelle Dockery, “Downton Abbey”); Leo Beekman (David Fynn, “Undate.