Here

It might have more profound ambitions and life-affirming aspirations, but Here is really just a biopic about a living room.

While there are some sweet moments connecting humans over generations while defining a shared sense of place, this compilation of vignettes from director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) yanks aggressively at the heartstrings without adding up to much in the end.

Visually and logistically, it’s a high-concept experiment — consisting primarily of a single wide shot from a slight angle — that winds up resembling a filmed stage play, with some impressive staging and set decoration.

The film opens with an extended wordless montage that takes us all the way back to dinosaurs and the Ice Age before eventually settling on a handful of people who occupy the same space for centuries.

Once a wooded settlement for Native Americans, the location in the 20th century became a modest, middle-class suburban Pennsylvania home located across the street from a historic estate that once belonged to relatives of Benjamin Franklin.

The film focuses most prominently on Richard (Tom Hanks), an artist who grows up in the house, then raises a family with his wife (Robin Wright), while later becoming a caretaker for his father (Paul Bettany) and mother (Kelly Reilly).

Their ownership of the property spans several decades, preceded by a charismatic inventor and followed by a contemporary Black family with big dreams.

Amid the shifting technological advances and relationship dynamics — not to mention furniture and interior décor — we witness boisterous holiday gatherings, intimate episodes of quiet reflection, and life-changing decisions in between. There’s a birth, a death, a wedding, and a funeral.

The diverse snippets offer a glimpse into social and cultural changes over many generations, although they don’t provide a cumulative reason to care about the characters who quickly bounce in and out of the screen as time and circumstances shift.

The screenplay by Zemeckis and Eric Roth (Killers of the Flower Moon), adapted from a graphic novel by Richard McGuire, conveys both a sense of stability and impertinence, how the same location can yield such positive memories for one person and become such a source of misery for someone else.

Hanks and Wright, who are digitally de-aged for many of their scenes, provide emotional depth for gimmicky material driven by narrative contrivances. As a result, Here feels like nowhere.

Rated PG-13, 104 minutes.