Wish I Was Here (2014)
Directed by Zach Braff
Aidan Bloom, a struggling actor, father and husband, is 35 years old and still trying to find a purpose for his life. He and his wife are barely getting by financially and Aidan passes his time by fantasizing about being the great futuristic Space-Knight he'd always dreamed he'd be as a little kid. When his ailing father can no longer afford to pay for private school for his two kids and the only available public school is on its last legs, Aidan reluctantly agrees to attempt to home-school them. Through teaching them about life his way, Aidan gradually discovers some of the parts of himself he couldn't find.
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What critics compared Wish I Was Here to
The good will, sincerity and insightfulness that marked Zach Braff's 2004 smart directorial debut "Garden State" come up short in his long-awaited follow-up, "Wish I Was Here," a generically broad and vaguely life-affirming film that constantly veers into sitcom territory even as Braff struggles to steer it to a higher level.
Any of those motifs would have been plenty to sustain Braff's first directorial effort since 2004's terrific Garden State.
The movie landed a sizable deal with Focus Features shortly after its first screening — not unlike the swift process by which "Garden State" was picked up in a joint arrangement with Miramax and Fox Searchlight 10 years ago.
In Zach Braff's first film, the quietly charming "Garden State," he played a twentysomething single who acted more like a teenager — unfocused, oversensitive and socially maladroit.
It is more formally conventional than his first film, "Garden State," and thankfully less self-indulgent than his second film, "Wish I Was Here." "A Good Person" benefits from the same shrewd sense of detail and character evident in both, taking on ambitious themes of addiction, abuse, abandonment, overwhelming grief, and finding a way to forgive the unforgivable, even when it means forgiving yourself.
Since then, Braff has stepped behind the camera several times, including on 2014’s Wish I Was Here and an early episode of Ted Lasso (which earned him an Emmy nod).
Braff, whose 2004 debut film "Garden State" was awash in self-conscious navel gazing (which is to say nothing of his crowdsourced 2014 effort "Wish I Was Here," a misstep all around), mines honesty from his characters and doesn't go for cheap workarounds to their many problems.
Following 2014’s Wish I Was Here , a crowdfunded “spiritual sequel” to Garden State that failed to garner positive critical or box office attention, Braff disappeared from the public eye.
His follow-ups, Wish I Was Here in 2014 and Going In Style in 2017, didn’t do much to boost his approval rating as an auteur.
Six years after his last directorial feature – 2017’s “Going in Style” – Zach Braff has taken his place behind the camera once more, additionally helming the first film he’s written as well since 2014’s “Wish I Was Here,” making this year’s “A Good Person” feel like a true return to form for the multi-hyphenate, as he seeks to show that he’s “still got it.”