At 72, American filmmaker Robert Zemeckis has a storied career matched by few others. He is the visionary behind the extraordinary collision of live-action comedy and cartoon mayhem that is Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He gave birth to the sci-fi/comedy fortune Back to the future and the campy splendor of the cult idols Death becomes her. But far from the crazy humor of these offerings, he kept the iconic Forrest Gumpa literary adaptation that wowed audiences and the Academy, bestowing the decade-traversing drama with a total of 6 Oscars, including Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture.

Here, Zemecki’s latest offering, has a lot in common with Forrest Gump. On a casting level, that reunite Forrest Gump stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, who once again play a pair of young lovers, set in the 1950s and 1960s. It also unites Zemeckis with Forrest GumpOscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth, who this time is tasked with adapting a graphic novel from New York Times illustrator Richard McGuire. Here is also a heartfelt drama that spans time, though instead of just decades it plays out over centuries, even millennia.

But within this familiar framework, Zemeckis narrates major risks more akin to his less celebrated Hanks collaborations, primarily The Polar Express and Disney’s live-action Pinocchio. Where in his earlier films he blew our minds and won praise with practical effects, his later dives into digital effects have often veered into an ugly, uncanny valley. But even if it falters in the details, there is undeniably reason to celebrate the ambition and seriousness Here.

Here is a story over time about family.

Credit: Sony Pictures

Remarkably, Here appears to be filmed in one take. To be clear, it doesn’t seem like a long time, like the exciting real-time zombie thriller MadS. Replicating the look of McGuire’s series – which was teased in the trailer — whole Here is shot from a planted perspective, while the action takes place before it. The trick is that it won’t play out chronologically but instead a bit at the same time.

The frame Zemeckis presents shows a New England living room in a “semi-colonial” home, built in 1900. There, various furniture and furnishings will come and go in smooth visual transitions, and even fade away to reveal a swamp of oozing mud, where dinosaurs playing, then a plain made desolate and white by an ice age, then a verdant forest where the natives hunt, gather and fall in love. But mostly, Here is set in a living room and follows families from the early 1900s, after the Jazz Age, after World War II and beyond.

There, stories collide through frames within frames, which are outlined in white, a nod to their comics inspiration. So while much of the scene may be set in the 1960s, where a teenage boy (Tom Hanks, courtesy of de-aging CGI – more on that in a moment!) introduces an argument with his drunken father (Paul Bettany), a inner frame can reveal the families that came before. Images of weddings, Thanksgiving celebrations, marriage talks and funerals could potentially end up on top of the stage, succinctly showing all the stories that play out in this seemingly average space of an hour and 44 minutes of runtime. So why does it feel so much longer?

Here is a strange experiment at war with itself.

Credit: Sony Pictures

When you see the device unfold frame-in-frame across the screen, it’s easy to see how it could work in a graphic novel. On the page, each box invites you to imagine what might lie just outside its borders, a constant reminder of perspective but also how the limitations of the medium of the comic book itself can inspire your imagination.

Film as a form is considered by its audience to be more literal, which is Zemecki’s first challenge. While in some scenes the characters leave the picture – inviting the audience to assume what is happening off-camera – the visual stimuli of new information gathered every moment gives little time for the meaning of this device to wash over us. And yet, despite the collage effect played over the story, the film feels stuck in its locked state. One may wonder why this place – and perhaps that it may be some spot is exactly the point. But the fixed location makes the film feel like a recording of a stage show more than a movie, with performances to match.

Zemecki’s choices are daring and often terrifying.

Credit: Sony Pictures

As the film jumps in time, a star-studded ensemble treads the boards in this living room. Among them are not only Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as teenage lovers who marry, have children and face a wide range of mature problems in this space, but also Michelle Dockery as a turn-of-the-century suffragette, Ophelia Lovibond as a spunky fluffer with David Fynn as her smitten inventor husband, Daniel Betts as a frustrated bastard son of Benjamin Franklin, Nikki Amuka-Bird as a wealthy 2020s businesswoman, and Joel Oulette and Dannie McCallum as an unnamed original couple.

But the main story begins with Paul Bettany as a WII vet and Kelly Reilly as his loving wife. Their story is clichéd, with him as a quick-tempered patriarch whose parenting tools are yelling and endless glasses of bourbon, while she’s the smiling mother dedicated to smoothing it all out until she physically can’t anymore. The rough edges of Roth’s script are only enhanced by the pair’s acting style, which is largely theatrical. Perhaps the idea is to emulate the grandeur of Golden Era film – those black-and-white classics from the 1940s with flamboyant men and fast-talking ladies. But this theatricality spans the timeline, although it softens if a character is more emotionally rigid (Dockery) or brooding (Wright). Still, the tone Zemeckis pursues draws attention to himself and prevents the audience from buying into the story.

Interestingly, Zemeckis rejects the mainstream American film’s pursuit of performed authenticity. This film isn’t particularly concerned with how people actually talk, preferring a much more sentimental approach that veers into parable. These characters not only inexplicably rush into major life decisions—like giving up dreams of painting as soon as a survival gig is achieved—but also repeatedly deliver Our city-like revelations about the cruelty of the endless speed of time. Here is a deeply wistful film that always worries about how quickly time passes, and yet its own screen time feels like a crawl.

Roth’s main story about this 20th-century family is coated in clichés, making every reveal feel a little inevitable. The wordless story of the original couple, who fall in love, raise their child, die and mourn, is simplistic but mostly elegant – apart from an unfortunate close-up that reveals how awkward the waxed effect makeup looks. However, Hanks and his company are given scenes that demonstrate their purpose, spelling out every emotion and telegraphing every turn. So while they are fervent in their performance, the effect is one of stagnation, exacerbated by the fixed-camera perspective.

Here feels more like a play or a gallery exhibition than a film.

Perhaps this concept of a physical space as a kind of palimpsest, with characters living parallel lives, might have been more convincing on a stage or as a visual projection in a gallery. In the latter, dialogue could have been reduced or even eliminated to give the viewer more freedom to interpret the action, rather than being spoon-fed the emotional beats. If played on a stage, the character’s aging could have been communicated through costume and gestures, wigs and make-up instead of the uncanny technique that Zemeckis uses in Here.

As it is, the CGI used to transform 68-year-old Hanks and 58-year-old Wright into teenagers is distracting, as are the bizarre dead-eyed animated characters in Polar Express undermined its Christmas wonder. Heres VFX team may be able to digitally redefine jawlines and erase wrinkles, but the people left behind don’t look real and definitely don’t look like teenagers. This effect is not catastrophic, but it distances us from the reality that the film wants to present because its artificiality cannot be ignored. Theater audiences are more ready and willing to embrace the imagination, even if the seams of a wig cap or a microphone taped to a forehead are visible. On film, our suspension of disbelief flickers whenever a digital effect looks, well, like a digital effect. And Here often flaunts the limitations of CGI.

This ageless distraction inevitably draws our eyes to other bizarre details, like a birthday cake that is clearly a prop because it apparently weighs as much as Styrofoam. Or how strange it is that the aspiring painter who dreamed of becoming a professional artist only paints what is in this very living room. As in Polar Express and PinocchioZemeckis seems so enchanted by his vision that he has missed the details of execution that could damage it. He can see the forest beyond his living room, but not the trees.

Eventually, Here works like a movie in fits. Certain scenes are undeniably enchanting, including every bit of Lovibond and Fynn romancing while designing a recliner. Other scenes are less effective, mainly because the film’s theatrical tone clashes with the very real and traumatic subjects they touch on, which we ourselves in the audience experience – such as grappling with grief, grieving parenthood or dealing with dementia. I found myself wishing it had been a tight and enticing short film instead. As a whole, Here is far from the cohesive and compelling drama Forrest Gumpfar from the exciting world-building of Who Framed Roger Rabbit or Death becomes her.

In many ways, Here is an experiment in framing and concept that fails. And yet I’m impressed that Zemeckis did it. Even with the film’s rough edges, his passion and sentimentality are as clear as ever.

Here was reviewed from its world premiere at AFI Fest. The film opens in theaters on November 1.