Monday, December 29, 2014

Wish I Was Here

Wish I Was Here - Dir. Zach Braff (2014)


Zach Braff stirred up a little controversy when he launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund his second directorial effort, Wish I Was Here. Surely, Braff was living high on the hog off his big, fat Scrubs paychecks? Whether you agreed with Braff's methods for financing his film, the campaign successfully raised over $3 million.

It's been ten years since Braff made his directorial debut with Garden State, a movie that was critically praised by my peers and I. Looking back on it now; I find it cloying and overly precious though I can still admire Braff's visual whimsy. A decade later and it doesn't look like things have changed too much. Wish I Was Here is very much a spiritual sequel to Garden State. Braff's earlier picture was about an aimless twenty-something actor with a deceased mother and a disapproving father. Wish I Was Here is about an aimless thirty-something actor with a deceased mother and a disapproving father.

Wish I Was Here presents the notion that the angst and hipster melancholia of your 20's doesn't go away when you hit your 30's, despite getting married and raising a family in the suburbs.

Braff plays Aidan Bloom, an aspiring actor who hasn't had much luck since starring in a dandruff commercial a couple years ago. He has an icy relationship with his father Gabe (Mandy Patinkin), who pays for Aidan's children, Grace (Joey King) and Tucker (Pierce Gagnon), to attend an Orthodox Jewish school. Aidan's younger brother Noah (Josh Gad) has an even colder relationship with dad. They haven't seen each other in a long time while Noah lives in a trailer and spends his day writing nasty massages to celebrities on Twitter. Aidan's wife, Sarah (Kate Hudson), supports her husband's dream, but suffers silently at a menial job with the Water Department where she is regularly subjected to a co-worker's inappropriate comments.

Aidan is knocked for a loop when Gabe announces his cancer has aggressively returned. He has decided to spend whatever savings he has left on an experimental treatment, which means the kids can no longer afford to go to private school. Aidan decides that he'll home school Grace and Tucker until they can start public school next year. He finds the task much more daunting than anticipated.

Braff co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Adam and the results are a scattered mess. The narrative drifts into several detours along the way that include Noah's trip to Comic-Con to romance a cute cosplayer (Ashley Greene) and recurring fantasy sequences with Aidan as a sci-fi action hero. And did we really need to see the Bloom brood test drive an Aston Martin, aside from seeing Braff reunited with Scrubs co-star Donald Faison? Braff uses creative shorthand when it comes to spelling out his message by quoting T.S. Eliot or Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" while they repair a fence. Braff also slathers on the dreamy qualities of Wish I Was Here by lacing the soundtrack with classic folk rock (Paul Simon, Bob Dylan) and modern indie favorites (The Shins, Bon Iver). Still, Braff's playfulness is on display, such as staring at an empty display that reads, "This pamphlet will save your life."

At least, the acting is well done across the board with Mandy Patinkin as a standout. He brings stoicism and a dry sense of humor to the role. Kate Hudson is a delight and it's nice to see her in something of substance for a change. Both Joey King and Pierce Gagnon are great with a precociousness that feels authentic rather than forced. In particular, Gagnon seems to have a preternatural ability for the screen with his previous role being the ominous child in Looper. The late-James Avery makes a cameo appearance in an amusing scene where Aidan goes to an audition without realizing that the role is now for an African-American.

First world problems come to mind when discussing the drama of Wish I Was Here. It's hard to sympathize with an inert protagonist whose major issue is possibly getting a 9 to 5 job. Your enjoyment of Braff's sophomore film will depend on your love of Garden State and tolerance for schmaltz.


Rating: ** ½ (*****)

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