Man, whatever happened to Robert Zemeckis. In the past, Zemeckis created classic works like "Forrest Gump, Back to the Future Trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Polar Express" and many other great works I have grown up with. However after The Walk, his works have been disappointing and disappointing to say the least. This movie has a really ambitious and intriguing concept, but unfortunately, despite some solid and interesting moments, Zemeckis fails to experiment with the concept properly and ends up being tedious and underwhelming.
The concept of the camera staying in one place and the narrative feels ambitious and creative. With themes that are interesting and could be innovative on exploration, but Zemeckis' direction and the lack of emotional depth of the movie ruins what could have been a good movie. Filled with bloated plot lines, unbalanced structure, and characters that aren't fully developed, the emotional weight and engagement becomes more of a snooze fest. Almost as if Zemeckis saw The Tree of Life but kind of missed understood what made The Tree of Life amazing and made this more mediocre and dull. Provided with some rough dialogue and pacing issues.
The production designs and the camerawork is really good, alongside with the uses of the CGI of the face swap being pretty solid with the colors and movements. All of the performances are good as it's nice to see Tom Hanks and Robin Wright together again as they have good chemistry and scenes together. But it didn't work because of the sloppy and ham-fisted approach that really fails to do justice.
Robert Zemeckis will always still be one of my favorite directors. I grew up during my childhood, but unfortunately, his prime years are long, long behind.
