Movie Review: Here (2024) seen in theatres

Drama; not recommended for young children; mature themes, mild coarse language, brief sexuality, some suggestive dialogue, scenes that discuss death, including scenes which show death, some medical dialogue, scenes which depict life threatening illness, brief drug use, scenes which discuss and depict pregnancy

Tom Hanks stars in this film which shows generations of the same family inhabiting one house over the course of a century.

I really didn’t know at first how to describe this movie as there were scenes in the beginning of it which were irrelevant to the main plot of the film. The first 10 minutes of this movie showed time before humans walked on earth and dinosaurs still inhabited earth ETC. There was also a few scenes which depicted life in the jungle. As I watched this movie, I asked myself, “What does this have to do with Tom Hanks?” Also, I asked myself what that had to do with the movie I was watching. I mean, this depicted a period movie of sorts with a bit of sci fi and life before humans came to be. Also, there were scenes throughout which depicted different cultures of people living in the same house. This was really confusing me at times as I realized that there’s no way these people could have been in his family. This lead me to believe that the house was more of a public place rather than a home if different families can live there at any given time. I felt like the confusion was going to effect the overall rating of the movie. However, the movie started to make sense more and more as it progressed. My initial thought after seeing the preview for this movie was that it was about the passage of time. Tom Hanks family would have moved in when he was younger and he remained there until he was elderly. Well this is pretty much what happened despite the confusion in the first part of the movie. It shows Tom Hanks’ character growing throughout the years as he tries to raise a family on a shoe string budget….all the things normal people go through.

One thing I liked about this movie is the depiction of holidays throughout. The families celebrate Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, and New years all in the same living room every year and I was able to figure out that holidays were a big deal to them. As this is something that they have in common with me, this was one of the film’s good points.

Another thought that went through my head after seeing the preview for this movie was the fact that Tom Hanks is shown as his younger self in multiple scenes throughout. Growing up, I saw him in a lot of movies and I know that he was a big box office draw back then. This is what makes me believe that this film was made as a source of nostalgia for the older generation of people who might have grown up watching movies he was in. I was one of those people. I believe they made this movie to try and capitalize on the success he was at the box office. They don’t seem to have any good mainstream actors in today’s selection of films aside from maybe Will Ferrell, (and this is just my opinion.) What I mean is that in today’s world, I don’t think a lot of movies are seen by people for the admiration of the actor…..people who watch movies because they are fans of the actor portraying the character. Well, I have to say that they made a really good choice in trying to recapture the success of Tom Hanks.

Also, even though most of this movie depicts flashbacks of the 50’s and even earlier than that, some of the women weren’t that bad to look at either…and I can say this because I’m still single at the time of this writing.

So despite some confusion in the beginning of this movie, it wasn’t a total fail, especially since it featured Tom Hanks. As a matter of fact, this movie presents a situation where the good outweighs the bad in terms of quality. Having said that, I have to admit that parts of this movie were hard to follow and this has to be taken into consideration when determining the overall rating of this movie. Therefore, I cannot say it was a perfect score either. However, I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of nostalgia.

Movie rating: 7 out of 10

Next movie review: Rat Race (2001)