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Double Exposure Review: Wish I Was Here

by Taylor Sinople on July 21, 2014
Overall Rating
3.5
THE BOTTOM LINE

Stilted and unaffecting, "Wish I Was Here" is a disappointing sophomore effort from director Zach Braff.

3.5
Critic Rating
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Editor’s note: Our “Double Exposure” reviews pit two or more critics against one another on the same film to hash out their differences in opinion. Agree with what we have to say or want to offer your own take? Leave it in the comments below.

“Wish I Was Here” stars Zach Braff as Aidan – a thirty-something actor supported by his wife’s (Kate Hudson) salary and struggling to make ends meet in L.A. while caring for his highly religious daughter (Joey King) and lazy son (Pierce Gagnon). When Aidan’s father (Mandy Patinkin) is hospitalized for aggressive cancer treatment, he reevaluates his family, childhood, and career.

Taylor Sinople: So, I had heard people weren’t responding to it very well, certainly not like “Garden State,” but I was still surprised to find myself so at odds with a film that seems so stacked for success. A lot of what made “Garden State” a remarkable debut film is in place here, too: a failing actor searching for a direction in life, quirky, black comedy, and a phenomenal indie soundtrack (Shins to Dylan), yet little resonates. Director Zach Braff and co-writer/brother Adam J. Braff have a sort-of plot figured out, but the thematic structure is in complete disarray. A fantasy CGI sequence opens the film along with a monologue about wanting to be a hero but accepting being normal. Then, a family drama about a dying patriarch with excessive diversions into Jewish faith. The hero idea returns vaguely in the third act, but it’s not nearly sharp enough to function as the crux of the story.

Josef Rodriguez: One of the major problems that “Wish I Was Here” runs into early on is that it’s so similar to “Garden State” in almost every way. A failing actor (played by Zach Braff) deals with the death (or imminent death) of a parent by revisiting the idealistic whimsy of his youth and meeting (in this case it’s reconnecting) with a beautiful woman who will change his life forever. Also his father is successful and looks down on his life pursuits and he has a dead mother.
I couldn’t help but feel like “Wish I Was Here” was a sequel to “Garden State” thematically and narratively. It almost seems like we’re picking up with the same character 10 years later and, much like Braff’s filmmaking sensibilities, nothing has changed. What separates “Garden State” with this film is that Braff’s character in the former is essentially a man-child on the brink of adulthood. We sympathize with him because every living human being has to deal with this transition. In “Wish I Was Here,” Braff is still playing the same man-child, but he’s now married with kids and it’s not so cute anymore. His refusal to pursue a career is no longer endearing, it’s irritating.

 

Taylor: There’s an element of artificial construction that doesn’t sit well with Braff’s signature “coming to terms with the harsh realities of life” monologues. A key scene between Braff and wife (Hudson) is set on the Santa Monica beach at night – abandoned (yet perfectly lit), with the neon lights of the pier fuzzy in the background. This is beautiful, but not very honest. There’s a lot of showy cinematography like this getting in the way here. If “Boyhood” is all in the performances but lacking a visual identity, then “Wish I Was Here” decidedly suffers from the opposite problem.
 
Josef: Don’t even get me started on those monologues. The real failure of “Wish I Was Here” is the unbearable writing, and Braff writes himself a multitude of unconvincing platitudes that fall flat on their face due to both the nature of the character and the insincerity of the delivery. As an audience, we’re given even more reasons to hate Aidan due to the fact that he’s not afraid to dish out life advice to everyone who comes his way but can’t seem to hold it together long enough to watch his two kids for a day without tying them to a chair. 
 
It’s funny how you say that the film’s cinematography is distracting. I thought that, of all the creative minds that contributed to this film, the one who had matured the most since “Garden State” was cinematographer Lawrence Sher who, in the ten years since shooting that film, has developed a hell of an aesthetic working with Todd Phillips on the three “Hangover” films, among others. Teaming up again with Braff on this film, I think he’s done his best work yet. When the hokeyness script was just too much to handle, I often found myself focusing my attention on the gorgeous imagery that fills just about every frame of this film.
 
Taylor: To me, cinematography doesn’t do much if it isn’t effectively telling the story. I can objectively recognize some pretty shots being captured here, but they didn’t enhance my enjoyment as they would if I was in sync with Aidan in any way.
All the more frustrating is when “Wish I Was Here” slips into moments of something like a good movie. Josh Gad as Braff’s hermit brother, wounded by a rocky relationship with their dying father, is mostly successful as the outright comedian of the cast. On his loose plans to develop an iPhone app – “Fuck apps, it’s a saturated market. I’m gonna starting blogging.” And Mandy Patinkin as the stubborn father going through a sharp decline in health is committed and engaging – far more than the film returns to him.
 
Josef: Just about all the performances in this film are fantastic, and they save “Wish I Was Here” from being entirely unwatchable. Surprisingly, I thought the strongest one of the bunch was actually Kate Hudson, who plays Aidan’s frustrated wife. I appreciated that Braff attempted to give her more material than the average movie wife, but I thought her subplot was idiotic and added absolutely nothing to the film save for a surprisingly powerful scene that takes place in a supermarket late in the third act. However, that could have been constructed differently without the unnecessary build-up and still had the same effect.
Film Review Wish I Was Here

Taylor: The two things that stuck out to me the most as unnecessary and uninteresting are Braff’s insistence on incorporating a multitude of scenes taking place at a Hebrew school and at a temple, and the would-be through-line of the hero fantasy sequences. Diving into his reluctance to embrace faith at an older age is something that could work with this film, but were those scenes not used almost exclusively for repetitious “look at how funny these Jews are” comedy? Then, the CGI sequences with Aidan running around in a superhero suit – those little scenes are so broadly sketched and imprecise that they fail to put a pin down on any one thematic message. Yet Braff builds them as endcaps to the entire movie! I see most of the scenes of the entire film as departure stations. It sets them loose – the idea of a failing actor fantasizing about being a hero, the idea of an absurdly song-based Hebrew school, but the tracks don’t run to any particular destination and the movie ends with them still floating away out there, terribly undelivered upon.

Josef: There were moments (and by moments I mean fleeting seconds) where the film stumbles upon something special, but it just takes so much time and effort to get there that it’s really not worth it. The film starts off as a watchable sitcom and painfully devolves into an emotionally abusive showdown between the audience’s tolerance level for bullshit and the film’s ability to pack as much self-importance into two hours as humanly possible.
The scenes at the temple probably should have been a lot more interesting than they were. The “cool Priest,” or “cool Rabbi,” trope was utilized to the max, and there were scenes in which the lead Rabbi was just the butt of a joke, like a scene in which he drives a segway into a wall. I admittedly broke out laughing in this scene only because I was wondering why they held the camera on the shot for so long, but I feel like the payoff would have been much funnier in a less tonally inconsistent film. If Braff wanted to make a “Scrubs”-esque slapstick comedy that happens to also include valuable life lessons, then I say go for it. But he seems so intent on creating something lofty and timeless that he almost undoes the comedy aspect which, in my opinion, is fairly well-put together.
It seems that the CGI sequences were either heavily edited or added in as an afterthought. They bookend the film in significant ways. However, I agree that there weren’t nearly enough of these scenes, as I found myself really interested in what they represented. On the other hand, too many of these scenes would have been distracting and padded an already overlong runtime filled with slow-motion Shins music videos and unnecessary subplots.

 

Taylor: I find the adventurous tone of the trailer does show real scenes from the movie, but suggests there will be MORE of them, when in reality they are very short pieces stuck into the dying-father drama. I had anticipated really being out there with Braff – “Garden State” was a hell of an adventure and it didn’t have half the production or set pieces that this does. If the marketing campaign had inverted its approach to show us a lot more of the domestic drama and struggle with accepting death, allowing those fleeting scenes of whimsy to be unanticipated, the film could have been far better positioned for success.

 

Josef: The film being marketed and the film that’s being shown to audiences are pretty similar, in my opinion. The adventurous tone of the trailer is definitely the tone that the film wants to have, but is never to achieve through self-indulgence. That aside, I think the trailer does convey that “Wish I Was Here” is the corny, aesthetically appealing Braff-Attack that we all expected it to be. “Garden State” was such a departure from all of Braff’s previous work in that it was subdued, it was honest, and it was funny in a way that wasn’t immediately obvious. Overall, it was a sad film, one that managed to uplift its audience with an ultimately positive message about finding love and not letting apathy take away the things that make you happy. 
 
Because of that, it was an adventure. We rooted for Braff’s character because he deserved to be happy, something that isn’t necessarily true in “Wish I Was Here.” Aidan is a bit of a self-absorbed dick at the beginning of this movie, and his transformation into a loving, devoted father rings false. In terms of upper-middle-class domestic drama, “Wish I Was Here” can’t even shine the shoes of other films like “This is 40.” And, as far as saving the whimsy for the theater, “Wish I Was Here” is a bad film no matter how you slice it, and marketing can only do so much before you’re forced to sit down and endure the entire movie. And this is a bad movie.

 

Taylor: In one scene, Aidan looks at an empty container marked “this pamphlet could save your life,” and this is the overall effect of “Wish I Was Here” – there’s supposed to be something for us here, but it just wasn’t the right time to get at it. Braff’s sophomore film is a marketing trick primed for a critical flop – a heaping collection of unfulfilled plotlines and a phoned in screenplay dressing itself up as an indie adventure gem. It’s a mess. It’s actors acting. I’m not sure whether Braff is being bold in not giving his character any real romance to work with, or whether that’s the spark that the film needs, but a couple passages of strong dialogue aside, this is a film I’m disappointed to find I don’t like.
Continue Reading Issue #12
Language

English

Release

July 18, 2014 (limited)

Runtime

2 hr. 0 min.

Genre

Comedy, Drama

MPAA Rating

R

Director

Zach Braff

Cast

Zach Braff, Kate Hudson, Joey King, Pierce Gagnon, Mandy Patinkin, Jim Parsons, Alexander Chaplin, Ashley Greene, Josh Gad, Allan Rich

(All Features), Double Exposures, Features
Alexander ChaplinAllan RichAshley GreeneGarden StateJim ParsonsJoey KingJosh Gadkate hudsonMandy PatinkinPierce Gagnonwish I was herezach braff
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About the Author
Taylor Sinople
Taylor Sinople
Taylor is a Chicago-based writer and aspiring film historian. He is the editor here at TFP, and has contributed to a number of international publications such as Cinema Scandinavia, PopMatters, and Room 101 Magazine. He can also be found listening to podcasts, researching topics he has little use for, or running after a city bus.

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