The team from the acclaimed “Forrest Gump” is coming together for a new film which hits theaters this Wednesday, November 6, 2024. But the reviews are catastrophic.
The team of Forrest Gumpone of the most popular films of all time, is back. This Wednesday, November 6, viewers can discover the new film directed by Robert Zemeckis, to whom we also owe the classics Back to the Future, Alone in the World or Who wants Roger Rabbit’s skin?. For his latest production, he surrounds himself with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, who played Forrest and Jenny in the film released exactly thirty years ago.
And for this new film, suffice to say that the concept is both very original and experimental. Adapted from the graphic novel by Richard McGuire, Here – the most beautiful years of our life tells the story of several families over generations from a specific location in New England. The filmmaker made the rather daring choice of offering only one fixed shot for the entire film, that of a corner of a house, to tell the history and life of its inhabitants… since prehistory.
The idea is ambitious and very original. But the English-speaking critics are nevertheless acerbic for the moment. Here only garners a 35% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from the press, and barely 57% from the public. It’s not better on the aggregator Metacritic, which displays the critical score of 41/100, and that of the public, only 3.8/10.
Extremely severe, the Guardian describes Here of “ugly rejuvenation nightmare that wearily follows the same house through time”. For the British media, “nothing had really prepared us for its unforgivable boredom”, which is “the strangest and most embarrassing failure of the year”. Overall, critics criticize the film for “lacking gravitas” (Slant Magazine), but also for reducing its original concept to a simple “gimmick” (Rolling Stone) to the detriment of “its substance” (USA Today).
“It’s a bold formal choice to look at the world through a fixed point in space, but, unfortunately, it only serves the biggest dose of sentimentality of the year,” concludes the journalist for New York Magazine and Vulture. Conversely, the Hollywood Reporter salutes “the solid work” of the actors.
Already in theaters in the United States, Here had a disastrous start, with only $5 million generated on more than 2,600 screens. Remember that due to the techniques used, the film would have cost between 45 and 50 million dollars. So it’s not always in old pots that you make the best soup.
