Wish I Was Here

In 2004 Garden State was being hailed, by quite a few, as the film that finally encapsulated what it was like to come of age in the late 90's or early Noughts. That generation was viewed as a bunch of underachievers who preferred medicating themselves to actually having to feel anything. If you had problems concentrating in class, they'd just get you on Ritalin or Adderall. If you actually tried to achieve something and failed, they'd simply prescribe something for you to cope with the pain and in the process encouraged you to never try hard at anything again. And so on and so on.

So when Braff came around with State and literally screamed for everyone to wake up and feel again, it felt like a breath of fresh air. Now while I do agree in part with this view, I think that every generation has had their own coping mechanism in the past to help them get through. As long as weed, alcohol, acid, and mushrooms have been around, there has always been an alternative to feeling. You can't concentrate in class? Roll a fatty. Your girlfriend dumped you? Get a forty of Mickey's. Your parents are on you about graduation? Go tripping on campus! I'm not endorsing this behavior, I'm just saying that its happened a time or two.

In Braff''s case, it's known by everyone in Hollywood that he's a homebody. He hardly goes out unless it's for work. So I think his main motivation for making these movies is so that he'd have the opportunity to meet girls. I mean, if the alternative to being heavily medicated was getting to have sex with Natalie Portman, I think I'd break out of my funk too! Oh, a few more years of sitting around bored on your couch passes by? How about I make a movie that involves being in the middle of a love triangle with Rachel Bilson and Jacinda Barrett? I think Hollywood and the rest of America finally caught on to this sham and this explains why you haven't really heard from him until now.

Well not much has changed for Zach in the past 10 years. He's still funny, weird, and talented; it's just that he needs a producer to reign him in a bit. Wish I Was Here is the tale of Aiden Bloom, a 35 year old actor who is still holding on to his dream of making it in Hollywood despite the fact the biggest thing he's done is a commercial for dandruff; and ironically enough he still has dandruff, as his dad likes to constantly point out to him. Speaking of his dad Gabe(Mandy Patinkin), he doesn't approve of the paths his two sons have taken in life. Aiden is relying on his wife Sarah (Kate Hudson) to support him and their two children while he goes to audition after audition, and his brother Noah is simply living off the money his mother left him as he attempts to become a successful blogger. Because of this and his lack of compassion, the relationship between Gabe and his sons is a strained one at best. But Aiden starts to reevaluate his life when he learns that his dad is dying of cancer and doesn't have much time left.

The first twenty to thirty minutes of the movie are really funny as Braff repeatedly makes fun of the some of the hard core traditions of Judaism; and there are plenty of opportunities seeing as how he's Jewish and his two kids are going to a private Jewish school. He also has a swear jar that he is constantly feeding because he basically has no filter for his mouth, and this leads to some rather interesting conversations between him and his children; especially when they decide to home school them. Even Old Face Killer (Kate Hudson) didn't look that bad in this film as her face has finally caught up to her age but there is still a scene or two where they try and show the sexy side of her and it honestly just made me physically turn my face from the screen.

The main problem I have with this film is the dramatic change in tone that takes place once you find out Gabe has cancer. It literally sucks all of the fun out of the film and you are stuck watching this melodrama with these contrived scenarios. Mandy Patinkin is such a consummate professional though that it almost works. He almost, ALMOST got me at the end because they actually did come up with a scenario that we all have faced at least once in our life when the entire family is gathered around his hospital bed. And the kids are great in the film too; although I kept waiting for the little boy to start screaming and moving things around with his mind (Looper).

I liked the bonding Braff did with his kids throughout the movie; and even though the day dreaming sequences of him being in a sci-fi film were a bit goofy, they actually added a fairly enjoyable element to the experience. This movie could have been really fresh had they tackled this subject matter the way Jonathan Levine did with 50/50, but they didn't, so the movie gets a rating of kind of WEAK.