Three stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang
A little of Zach Braff goes a
long way.
He directed and co-wrote this
film, sharing scripting credit with older brother Adam. The brothers also can
be found among the 15 producers, co-producers, line producers and executive
producers — just in passing, can we finally admit that the jockeying for
“producer” credit has well and truly gotten out of hand? — and Zach also stars.
Perhaps more tellingly, crucial
funding was provided by the 46,520 backers who contributed to a Kickstarter
campaign, so that Braff had the creative freedom to cast, shoot and cut the
film precisely to his specifications. He likely found it reasonable to assume
that the lion’s share of these crowd-funding supporters were fans who’ve
followed his career since TV’s Scrubs:
No surprise, then, that Braff has rewarded this loyalty by playing a character
whose mannerisms and line readings look and sound much like that show’s Dr.
John “J.D.” Dorian.
Which isn’t a bad thing, as long
as one enjoys the by-now-very-familiar
Braff shtick.
Braff has been dubbed the New
Jersey Woody Allen, and with ample cause; the younger actor/filmmaker delivers
a similar blend of chatty social ineptness and Jewish angst. Much of Braff’s
dialogue has the cadence and timing that one would expect from a stand-up act:
less a dramatic performance, more like stepping out of the character in order
to make a wry observation about life, the universe and everything.
But not consistently, in the case
of this film. At times, we get the Zach Braff from Scrubs, delivering a line with the wheedling, precious, little-boy
inflections of an adolescent trying to talk his parents into serving ice cream
for supper. Alternatively, Braff retreats from that artifice and attempts to be
stern and serious, now wanting to persuade us that he really is capable of handling this script’s solemn
topics with an appropriate level of thespic skill.
Doesn’t work. Braff’s signature
tics and hiccups are so thoroughly a part of his performance, that he never
succeeds in becoming anybody other than himself. Which is a shame, because when
he gets out of his own way, Wish I Was Here makes some thoughtful
observations about family estrangement, seizing the day, and death with
dignity.
Braff stars as Aidan Bloom, a
35-year-old struggling Los Angeles actor who relies on wife Sarah (Kate Hudson)
to keep things together financially. He’s blithely unaware that she chafes
under the soul-sucking sameness of her public service job, believing instead that
she’s cheerfully content to keep supporting “his dream.”
They have two children — teenage
Grace (Joey King) and grade-school Tucker (Pierce Gagnon) — who attend a
private Jewish day school courtesy of tuition payments made by Aidan’s father,
Gabe (Mandy Patinkin). Aidan’s long-estranged bachelor brother, Noah (Josh
Gad), lives a withdrawn life in a house trailer by the beach, and is regarded
as a total loser by their father.
Actually, Gabe isn’t much for
saying nice things about anybody; absent the calming influence of his
(recently?) deceased wife, Gabe has yielded to a cranky, crusty bearing that
Aidan and Sarah do their best to ignore. Sarah’s very presence has long been an
affront to Gabe, since she isn’t Jewish; fortunately, Grace has thoroughly embraced
the Jewish tradition and teachings that mean so much to her grandfather.
Were this status quo to continue,
we can imagine that Aidan and Sarah might slide into divorce, however
reluctantly, due to his failure to, well, engage
in a meaningful way. They’re spared that possible fate by another crisis: the
resurrection of Gabe’s cancer, which requires a significant financial outlay to
battle anew. The upshot: Gabe no longer can fund the spendy private school.
What to do? Aidan is horrified by
the public school option, particularly mid-term. And he’s too self-centered to
consider the reasonable suggestion that his wife proposes first: that he
home-school their children. After all, it’s not as if he’s doing anything
meaningful, while waiting for the occasional casting call. (Aidan, even more
desperate than Dustin Hoffman’s Michael Dorsey in 1982’s Tootsie, even joins a group of all-black actors hoping for the lead
in a production of Othello.)
No surprise, the initial
home-schooling sessions are less than successful; Grace knows far more about
geometry than her clueless father, and Tucker would much rather play with his
power drill (an intriguing character detail that goes nowhere).
Breakthroughs emerge only when
Aidan decides to share himself with
his children: to teach them what he thinks, and why; to involve them in their suddenly
uncertain family dynamic. And, as well, to indulge in a few modest “bucket
list” dreams voiced by Grace and Tucker, and funded by the overflowing contents
of the family’s massive “swear jar.”
Yes, that’s rather corny. But it
works, to a degree, in large part because King gracefully carries so much
of the story’s emotional weight. She’s a talented young actress with a gift for
conveying complexity through her thoughtful expressions, and her method of handling
weighty dialogue with the earnest sincerity of youth; the result is always
persuasive. She also has a way of screwing up her eyes and squinting, when
confronted by a particularly dumb statement or situation, which cuts the
offender (usually her father) dead.
Followers of television’s
recently concluded Fargo miniseries
already are familiar with King, who was similarly powerful — in her quiet, contemplative
way — throughout that darkly comic narrative. She also has elevated popcorn fare such as Oz the Great and Powerful and
White House Down; clearly, she has an
impressive career ahead.
Hudson also brings a lot to the
party, as the glue that holds this family together. (Never mind that she gives
Aidan credit for that very trick, at one point in this narrative; that’s simply
Braff’s script giving its author yet another pat on the back.) Like her mother,
Goldie Hawn, Hudson has a gift for blending mischievous intent — ah, those
sparkling eyes! — with heartfelt sentiment. Her prime moment comes during a
heart-to-heart with Gabe, and it’s a helluva scene.
Patinkin, as well, delivers his
performance with customary skill; he’s such
a fine actor. He overplays the frail cancer victim a jot, particularly with too
much emphasis on the fragility of his voice, but I blame Braff (as director)
for that minor misstep.
Donald Faison, Braff’s longtime
buddy from Scrubs, has a droll cameo
as an Aston Martin salesman.
Other elements of the story
remain underdeveloped, sometimes irritatingly so. King’s Grace gets the lion’s
share of the “youth focus,” which would be fine if she were an only child;
Gagnon’s Tucker, by comparison, seems less a real kid and more a typically rambunctious
TV sitcom kid. And what’s with the drill? Yes, it’s a cute affectation, but
what’s the back-story?
The all-important swear jar also
comes to a bewildering end, utterly abandoned for no particular reason.
As a “stickler alert” aside — and
I mention this only because Grace is shown correcting her father’s grammar —
this film’s title obviously should have been Wish I Were Here. Which I’m
hoping Braff realized, and he went with the “error” deliberately, as a subtle
inside joke.
Perhaps most surprising is the
degree to which the normally effervescent Gad has been diminished; he plays
Noah with the bland, muted bearing of somebody on Quaaludes. We get a whiff, at
one point, of Noah’s savant-ish ability to analyze stray parts for the purpose
of constructing Something Fabulous — a talent one would expect to be very useful to, say, an engineer — but
this goes no further than a decision to design and build a costume in order to
impress a cos-play enthusiast (Ashley Greene) at San Diego’s ComicCon.
Cue some token scenes at
ComicCon, which feel like inserts designed solely to please Braff’s fan base.
Even more pointless, though, are the film’s frequent retreats into Aidan’s
fantasy world, where he imagines himself a helmeted space knight accompanied by
a cute flying droid, and tasked with saving ... well, anybody can see that one coming.
A lot of money was wasted on
these irrelevant special effects, which the film neither needed nor benefits
from. Clearly, they were funded by the unexpected largess of that Kickstarter
campaign ... proving, once again, that suddenly having the means to indulge,
doesn’t mean that one should indulge.
Ultimately, this feels too much
like a vanity project. Somebody else — or several somebody elses — needed to deliver
a top-to-bottom rewrite, and I’m also inclined to believe that Braff should
have handed over the directorial reins. As it is, he spends far too much screen
time being himself, and that interferes with what should have been a much
sweeter story.
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