Check out my youtube review HERE!!!
Zach Braff made quite a splash with his début feature 'Garden State,' showing promise as a director. Little did people know it would take him ten years until he made his next film and he would do it with the help of his fans. If this is your first time on the internet or if you missed a certain period of time, Zach Braff used the crowd-sourcing website Kickstarter to fund his film. Now people attacked him because of his celebrity, asking 'Why does he need our money?' Braff's reasoning was to make the film without studio interference so that it could completely be his own vision...and there are both positives and negatives to this.
The Bloom family find themselves in trouble financially once Aiden's (Braff) father gets cancer and can no longer help them out. Aiden is a struggling actor with his wife acting as the bread winner. Before their problems their kids were attending a private Jewish school being raised in their grandfather's religion. Aiden's brother has always felt like a disappointment to his father especially because he has the IQ of a genius but not the drive of one and after the death of their mother drifted away. Aiden must try to reconcile his brother and father, choose between his dream and family's stability, strengthen his relationship with his children and show his wife the he still loves her while essentially going through a mid-life crisis.
Wish I Was Here stars Zach Braff, Kate Hudson, Josh Gad, Mandy Patinkin, Joey King and Pierce Gagnon as a struggling family unit with Ashley Greene, Jim Parsons, Donald Faison and heap of Scrubs guests stars in small roles.
First things first, with his sophomore effort Braff is really showing his strength as director, unfortunately he also shows his weakness as a writer. With a script co-written by Braff and his brother Adam they create a rather heartfelt film with nice touches of humour and drama that unfortunately only slightly cover the self-indulgent and trite shallowness of the film which thinks it's a lot more revelatory than it really is. Now the good news is that this doesn't stop the film from being pleasant and enjoyable and the actors really help sell the film. There and many great performances in this film, particularly Kate Hudson who give her best performance since Almost Famous.
The film is really well made with some of the best cinematography of the year with the help of Kickstarter which allowed Braff to shoot on anamorphic film to great results. The soundtrack is great as well just like Garden State's was making this film very pleasant viewing, unfortunately is just isn't essential viewing. Braff doesn't really do anything he didn't already say in Garden State, in fact this time around he does it with a cynical mean-spiritedness which doesn't have as much charm. It's nice, heartfelt, enjoyable but also very slight and rather shallow. I would love to see Zach Braff use his skill with actors and new found visual style on something that wasn't written by him because I really think he has potential as a director.
3 out of 5 stars.
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