I’ve promised myself that I won’t mention Zach Braff’s 2004
writer/director/actor debut feature or compare his latest effort in those fields, “Wish I Was Here” to it in any way
during this post. That way I can really focus on “Wish I Was Here” as its own
entity.
In
fact, this clarifying sentence you’re reading now will be the last time I’ll
even vaguely hint at it. Just go ahead and put it right out of your brain.
Right. Out.
So 2004’s
“Garden State” was really awesome and … Shish kabobs! Sorry. Starting now. Get
it out of your mind, will you? Geez.
“Wish I Was Here.” That’s what we’re talking
about.
This
movie, the new one, it’s not bad. If you head over to Rottentomatoes.com, it
looks really bad, but it’s not. It’s rough around the edges. The first act is
decidedly not great, plot points are introduced and forgotten about on occasion
and some of the plot threads we did stick with, I’m not sure we needed to.
But it
also features that blend of laugh out loud funny and poignant “What does it all
mean” moments that the world expects, nay, demands from a Braff movie.
In “Wish
I was Here” Braff plays a guy who is what would kindly be described as a
struggling actor. More accurately, he’s a long-term unemployed guy who
occasionally shows up to be rejected at auditions. He’s married to Kate Hudson, who supports the
family by doing data entry for the water department and has two kids, a daughter,
tweener Grace, who’s really into their Jewish heritage and the younger one, Tucker,
who’s into video games or something.
