‘Here’ isn’t there: Conceptually daring visuals blunt empathy, emotions in tiresome gimmick movie

“Here” — 2 stars

“Here” is a conceptually daring but tiresome gimmick movie, a virtually plotless, visually busy anthology of nonintersecting stories spanning zillions of years, and we feel as if we’ve sat through most of them.

Not only does “Here” traffic in superficial depictions of Native American and Black characters, it commits a cinematic crime of sticking Robert Zemeckis’ leading actors from his Oscar-winning “Forrest Gump” with the least empathetic characters of their storied careers.

How could Zemeckis possibly allow Tom Hanks and Robin Wright to be robbed of their personal charisma?

The chronologically challenging “Here” is what happens when ADHD filmmakers forget to take their Adderall, then create a movie that could be based on the Carousel of Progress attraction at Disney World.

If you’ve experienced that audio-animatronic show, you might wonder, “How can anyone make a movie based on a single-set stage that chronicles changes in a typical (white) American family over several decades?”

“Here” proves it can be done.

But not all that well.

Alan Silvestri’s gooey, treacly score — reminiscent of 1940s melodramas — sets the “prepare-to-be-weepy” tone, somewhat at odds with the following footage of volcanic eruptions, a quickly melting Ice Age, and dinosaurs roaming a freshly created plot of Earth, which many millennia later becomes the setting for a New England house serving as the home occupied by families in different epochs.

John and Pauline (Gwilym Lee and Michelle Dockery) move into the house at the turn of the 20th century. She worries her aviation enthusiast hubby will someday crash in one of those newfangled flying machines.

“Aviation is the future!” he asserts.

In 1945, World War II vet Al (Paul Bettany) and his pregnant wife, Rose (Kelly Reilly), buy the house for an exorbitant $3,400, requiring him to get jobs he doesn’t like. He blunts his life disappointments with booze.

He and Rose produce three kids, one being Richard (a digitally youthened Hanks, looking as if he just stepped out of a “Bosom Buddies” episode). The talented Richard wants to be a graphic artist, but an unintended pregnancy with girlfriend Margaret (a cosmetically sandpapered Wright) forces him to get a job as a salesman, inheriting his father’s frustrated life of unfulfilled dreams.

This relatively downer baby boomer strand dominates “Here,” even though the most fun homeowners turn out to be Lee (David Fynn) and Stella (Ophelia Lovibond), a pair of childless, 1920s bohemians with healthy libidos and a knack for living in the moment. He even invents the modern recliner chair.

“Here” gives a short shrift to the segment involving a Black family who move into the house in 2015. Devon Harris (Nicholas Pinnock) and Helen Harris (Nikki Amuka-Bird) have a teenage son named Justin (Cache Vanderpuye). An acknowledgment of American racism boils down to a father-son cautionary chat about how to behave if pulled over by a white cop while driving a car.

The least developed strand shows young Indigenous Americans (Joel Oulette and Dannie McCallum) sharing a kiss and later becoming a family.

“Here,” written by Eric Roth and Zemeckis, based on the graphic novel by Richard McGuire, makes us feel a bit like the hero from TV’s “Quantum Leap.” We keep jumping in and out of chronologically scattered events, and we must piece them together to give them meaning.

Impressive tech tricks have always been Zemeckis’ calling card. Here, he throws scores of boxed images up on a split screen, constantly demanding our attention.

Even so, his primary use of a single fixed camera distances us from his characters, called upon to support the impressive technology instead of the other way around.

So why the prehistoric preamble?

To show us the bigger picture?

To tell us the problems of all these people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world?

For all its inventiveness, “Here” pushes conventional themes.

Follow your heart.

Don’t postpone your dreams.

Life is short.

Live in the now.

All the soundtrack needs is a refrain from the Grass Roots’ “Let’s Live for Today.”

It’s got the other baby boomer tunes covered.

• • •

Starring: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly

Directed by: Robert Zemeckis

Other: A Sony Pictures theatrical release. Rated PG-13. 114 minutes