PARK CITY — It’s easy to make fun of Zach Braff’s “Garden State,” which The Onion memorably labeled “Some Poor F—‘s Favorite Movie,” and it’ll be even easier to mock the middle-aged followup, “Wish I Was Here,” which arrives a full decade after Braff’s hit debut as director.
Braff wears his emotions on his sleeve, and additionally the new movie suffers from a severe case of the cutes. For no reason except it looks adorable, his character spends a chunk of the movie toting around a gallon-sized swear jar full of cash trying to purchase salvation with crumpled-up dollar bills. And the film’s interspersed cuts to fantasy sequences in which Braff plays an astronaut roaming the wilderness do not work at all and should be cut entirely.
Still, this Kickstarter-funded project is, if too long at 120 minutes, pleasing in many ways. Braff’s secret weapon is that, for all his on-the-nose writing, he is really funny and this is a sharp, winning script he co-wrote with his brother Adam.
Zach plays Aidan, a failed actor living in the L.A. suburbs who is about to have to pull his children from an expensive Hebrew school because his acerbic intellectual father (Mandy Patinkin) can no longer float him the money, which the dad wants to instead spend on a New Age treatment for the cancer that threatens soon to kill him.
Aidan’s exasperated wife (Kate Hudson, showing a grace and composure that heralds an interesting second act for her career) is nudging him to get a real job, while his brother Noah (Josh Gad, never better) is another family failure, a tech genius who is wasting his talents on blogging and lives in a trailer by the sea.
The Braffs come up with dozens of funny lines and the film has broad appeal. I can understand why the filmmakers had to turn to Kickstarter for financing (it’s easy to picture Jewish executives calling the film “too Jewish”) and I’m glad it got made. It’s also semi-rare to see a film dare to take on big topics that affect us all, like maturity and preparing for death, not to mention mundane middle-class worries like what to do if you can’t afford private school but live in a subpar public-school district. (Aidan decides to home-school the kids, which leads to a funny scene showcasing his ineptitude).
Braff and Hudson demonstrate a charming rapport together and do get across the sense of a loving couple that’s been together for a while but is having problems.
I certainly don’t object to a comedy having soul, but there must be a dozen scenes that pull at the heartstrings, and that’s too many.
I suggest a few trims are in order but I do think the film is destined to win nationwide distribution.
Still, the audience seems to have moved on from that teary-eyed 1990s indie-band feel, so I very much doubt the film will meet with anything like the success of “Garden State,” which remains one of the most beloved Sundance films.