Tom Hanks de-aged in Here, Robert Zemeckis latest film

Paul Bettany, 53, and Kelly Reilly, 47, are the parents of Tom Hanks, 68, as the Forrest Gump team is reunited three decades later.

A de-aged Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in Here.

American director Robert Zemeckis, whose movies include the Back to the Future trilogy (1985-1990), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Forrest Gump (1994), for which he won an Oscar, is known as an innovator, especially when it comes to visual effects.

I remember seeing Forrest Gump and being impressed by how Tom Hanks’s Gump was integrated into archival footage so it looked like he was meeting, shaking hands with and talking to historical figures such as John F. Kennedy Jr.

That’s old hat by now, so for Here, his 25th feature film, Zemeckis has used artificial intelligence technology to de-age the actors in real time rather than in post-production. Hence Paul Bettany, 53, and Kelly Reilly, 47, can be the parents of Hanks, 68.

Three decades later, this film reunites the Gump team: The director, the co-scriptwriter Eric Roth, two of the stars (Hanks and Robin Wright), the cinematographer Don Burgess and the composer Alan Silvestri.

The setting is New England and the story unfolds in one home over a century. If you’ve ever wondered who lived in your home before you did, this setting may spark your imagination.

The idea is how four families occupied the same space at different times. It’s mainly shot with a static camera, trained on the living room, so in the close-ups the actors approach the lens rather that vice-versa.

The question is whether this works. Yes and no. An overarching theme is that life is short so don’t waste it, as some of the characters do, willingly and unwillingly.

The movie opens with dinosaurs roaming the site where the house will be built, moves to an ice age, then trees growing, flowers blooming and native Americans living on the land. That feels like a nod, deliberate or not, to Terrence Malick’s 2011 masterpiece The Tree of Life.

Then the house is built, the people move in. The film crosses in time between the different families to show the ups and downs of their lives, many of which conveniently happen in the living room, including births and deaths.

The family we see most is World War II veteran now salesman Al Young (Bettany), his wife Rose (Reilly) and their three children. Bettany doesn’t quite control his English accent, but he’s strong in the moments he remembers what he saw in the war. When the eldest child, Richard (Hanks), brings home his high school sweetheart, Margaret (Wright), the digital de-aging is a problem. Late teen Hanks and Wright look at least 30. It also feels like they are looking out from behind masks.

The best characters, and the best performances, are David Flynn as Leo, an inventor behind the La-Z-Boy reclining chair, and Ophelia Lovibond as his pin-up model wife.

This loved-up, randy couple from the 1920s lift a movie that otherwise relies on the songs for pep, such as The Beatles on the black and white TV singing All My Loving when Richard and Margaret wed (in the living room).

Richard wants to be an artist, which makes him an avatar for the author, Richard McGuire, who illustrated Here, the 2014 graphic novel on which this film is based. Whether he can be, or whether he will have follow in his father’s salesman footsteps, becomes part of the drama as he ages from the de-aging process.

Even the cleverer moments, such as a roof leak foreshadowing the pregnant Margaret’s water breaking, feel a bit heavy handed. This film is interesting to look at if you are interested in movie-making technique, but as a drama it is rather undramatic.

Here (M)

104 minutes

★★½