Robert Zemeckis’s stellar filmography includes such memorable crowd-pleasers as Romancing the Stone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? the Back to the Future films, Forrest Gump and Cast Away. More recently, however, he’s had a string of turkeys, like Polar Express, Welcome to Marwen, The Witches and Pinocchio.

So, in an apparent attempt to jump-start his career, he takes the Big Swing with this eons-spanning saga about – what? – a place. It’s about the myriad changes one single plot of land goes through, from the Earth’s fiery formation to the age of the dinosaurs, throuogh medieval and colonial times and finally to a modern-day home.

Just by the sheer volume of such an undertaking, a few lyrical moments shine through, but the fixed-camera conceit soon becomes annoying. The movie packs multiple lifetimes into a single space, complete with generic insights and platitudes, but then proceeds to make them all dull as dirt in a way that even actors on the level of Tom Hanks and Robin Wright can’t save. 

Affected and artificial, this is not just sentimental, it’s fake sentimental. More gimmick than substance, this soulless mess is not only a bad movie, it’s one of the worst in a decade. The Big Swing is a strikeout. (114 min)