Wish I Was Here

Synopsis: Aidan Bloom (Zach Braff) is a jobbing actor struggling to hold onto his dream as the pressures of a family force him to reconsider his life choices, particularly when his father (Mandy Patinkin) is diagnosed with aggressive cancer.

Wish I Was Here achieved a good deal of pre-production publicity when Braff, unable to get backers for his film went to Kickstarter and asked fans of his first film, the indie hit Garden State to donate money to help him make what he touted as a “spiritual sequel”.  The fuss was apparently over  a well-to-do actor exploiting his reputation to raise money for a personal project.  Whatever justification there might have been in the criticisms, all would have been forgiven if the outcome had been any good. Which it is not.

Although it starts off well enough appearing to be a sassy indie comedy it progressively mires itself in self-indulgence  and unsolicited nostrums on the meaning of life.  Scripted by Braff with his brother, Adam, though  presumably based on real experience Wish I Was Here is like a Judd Apatow movie re-written by a devotee of  New Age philosophy.The result only manages to illustrate its author’s message rather than embody it.

Braff who made his name as Dr Dorian in the hit TV series Scrubs, yet again playing an ineffectual man-child, is pretty much the same character a few years down the track, now with an inexplicably spunky wife , Sarah (Kate Hudson) and two pre-teen children. She works at a boring clerical job to support the family while he unsuccessfully auditions for bit parts in TV.  Things are not going well in other  words but when his father (Mandy Patinkin) learns that he is dying of cancer Aidan must try to reconcile himself and his estranged brother, Noah (Josh Gad), with their grumpy paterfamilias.

The best parts of the film are the comedic that Braff wrests from the story, riffing on things like Jewishness, home schooling and a small-time actor’s lot with flair. Unfortunately a much larger part of the film is given over to well-meant but sentimental observations on life and deat, family, forgiveness etc., etc. The Braffs contrive to give all the characters at least one meaningful exchange s – not just Aidan with his Dad but his Dad with Sarah, his daughter with Noah, Noah with Sarah and so on until all the permutations are covered. There is also a sub-plot about a co-worker acting “inappropriately” to Sarah that keeps recurring as does a sequence involving Braff dressed up as a spaceman running through the woods or across a desert accompanied by a flying robot. It all feels like material stretched too thinly across its running time.

Although evidently sincere and at times amusing, Wish I Was Here is far-too heavy-handed in its attempts to be poignant to be effective.
 

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