Yet. He isn't calling for homosexuals to be burned alive yet. He'll have to see how many of them buy tickets to 2 Garden 2 State.domino harvey wrote:No matter how obnoxious Zach Braff may be, at least he isn't calling for homosexuals to be burned alive in ovens like the star of the Russian version of Scrubs
Wish I Was Here (Zach Braff, 2014)
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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Forthcoming Confabulous Fabtraption of Zach Braff
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CSM126
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Re: Forthcoming Confabulous Fabtraption of Zach Braff
Thought I'd share the review I furiously typed after getting home from seeing this, because I needed to vent pretty bad.
A twelve year old girl makes a tearful phone call to her estranged uncle, begging him to come and see his father one last time before he dies, to make amends for years of strife that have driven them apart. It sounds like a powerful scene, and it is. Well, at least if you have your eyes closed. With eyes open you notice that the girl is wearing a hot pink wig and the uncle is taking the call while wearing a home made spandex astronaut costume, which somehow has not prevented him from having athletic sex with a woman in a full body furry suit. Now the whole scene has transformed from powerful to insulting.
And so it goes in "Wish I Was Here", the newest awful film from writer/producer/director/star Zach Braff. Mr. Braff, a popular TV star and multi-millionaire, funded the film through a Kickstarter campaign, which signals two things: 1. That he was smart enough not to waste his own money on this boondoggle, and 2. That his ego is so big he honestly believes his fans will pay him to film his pathetic, childish navel gazing. Tragically, said fans proved him right. And so the ego grows.
The film revolves around Braff's character (aka: self), Aiden, a thirtysomething dad in LA with an impossibly beautiful wife (Kate Hudson) and two perfect kids. Hudson works for the state to put food on the table while Aiden pursues his hopeless dream of being an actor. So while his wife slaves away, Aiden goes around town getting rejected again and again, never accepting that he should just get a real job. Funny though that, despite being out of work for years, he always has a wad of cash in his pocket to feed the Swear Jar every time he says "fuckhead" in front of the kids, which happens so often that by the film's halfway mark the jar has enough cash to send the wife to the spa while Aiden takes the kids on a road trip. All this despite the central plot point of the family being broke! HELLOOOOOOOOOO?
The kids go to a private Jewish academy at the behest of Aiden's dad, Gabe (Mandy Patinkin, slumming it big time), who also pays the tuition. A diagnosis of cancer forces Gabe to cut off the tuition so he can pay for New Age treatments which don't even work - if they did, we wouldn't get that all-important phone call scene, after all - and Aiden is suddenly in crisis mode. Unwilling to send the kids to public school, jobless Aiden takes up home schooling them and fails miserably, further proving that he is a massive, horrible moron. Reminder: He's supposed to be our hero.
What an awful, terrible film this is. No one can deny that Mr. Braff is an auteur, but here's the thing: so to is Polish/Martian filmmaker Tommy Wisseau, and no one is claiming "The Room" as a good movie. The only difference between "Wish" and "Room" is the fact that Mr. Wisseau's film is so bad it earns tidal waves of derisive laughter to cement itself as a midnight movie staple, whereas "Wish I Was Here" is so bad it'll make audiences grit their teeth as their knuckles turn white from furiously gripping the seat in an attempt to keep themselves from walking out on the misbegotten twelve dollar investment they made in a ticket.
Mr. Braff is fond of splashing the screen with imagery that is meant to be profound, but instead comes across as the fantastical ravings of a ten year old. The film constantly returns (including, jarringly, in the very first scene) to a fantasy of Aiden dressed up as a sword-wielding astronaut fleeing a Darth Vader type who ultimately turns out to be his dad. I have no idea what it means, or is supposed to mean, or more importantly why Mr. Braff thought it was worth hiring a team of CGI artists to animate these sequences. But I do know that it obviously means something to Braff, and I also know that that is sad. And then there's the pink wig, which Aiden allows his daughter to purchase because, cloyingly enough, "it's just as unique as you are", and the uncle's space suit, which is only there so Aiden can look at him through the domed helmet and say "the worst thing about hiding in a fishbowl is that everyone can see you". Please, Mr. Braff, locate a spoon and proceed to gag me with it.
Making matters somehow even worse is the fact that Aiden is a horrible person. The Jewish grandfather is only there so Aiden, an atheist, can be disturbingly anti-Semitic, which combines with moments of outright racism to form a swirling vortex of hate which is meant to be our sympathetic hero. Aiden also fully expects his wife to support the family so he can goof off, which is spelled out in a scene that Mr. Braff has the audacity to end with Aiden tearfully saying"But what about my dreams?". Yes, downtrodden wife, bust your hump alongside your sexually harassing partner in a thankless job so your man-child husband can chase his dream of playing "Random Crew Member Number One" in the debut episode of the new Star Trek series.
I am not fucking kidding.
Between his prior directorial effort "Garden State", his starring turn in the "pretty people with problems" movie "The Last Kiss", and now "Wish I Was Here" Zach Braff has proven himself to be a self-obsessed, self-pitying, whiny and thoroughly unlikeable presence. He has no sense of humor about these petty things that mean so much to him, which only makes him seem even more childish (if that's possible), and his futile attempts at making his own version of a self-reflexive 1970s Woody Allen-ish movie only serve to make him more annoying. You are not that talented, sir, and your insistence on believing you are was once pitiable, but by now it's just infuriating.
The good news is that the need for Kickstarter makes it clear that Mr. Braff is having a hard time finding complete funding in Hollywood. Now we just need his fans to go broke and maybe then we'll never have to see his solipsistic drivel darken our collective doorsteps ever again.
A twelve year old girl makes a tearful phone call to her estranged uncle, begging him to come and see his father one last time before he dies, to make amends for years of strife that have driven them apart. It sounds like a powerful scene, and it is. Well, at least if you have your eyes closed. With eyes open you notice that the girl is wearing a hot pink wig and the uncle is taking the call while wearing a home made spandex astronaut costume, which somehow has not prevented him from having athletic sex with a woman in a full body furry suit. Now the whole scene has transformed from powerful to insulting.
And so it goes in "Wish I Was Here", the newest awful film from writer/producer/director/star Zach Braff. Mr. Braff, a popular TV star and multi-millionaire, funded the film through a Kickstarter campaign, which signals two things: 1. That he was smart enough not to waste his own money on this boondoggle, and 2. That his ego is so big he honestly believes his fans will pay him to film his pathetic, childish navel gazing. Tragically, said fans proved him right. And so the ego grows.
The film revolves around Braff's character (aka: self), Aiden, a thirtysomething dad in LA with an impossibly beautiful wife (Kate Hudson) and two perfect kids. Hudson works for the state to put food on the table while Aiden pursues his hopeless dream of being an actor. So while his wife slaves away, Aiden goes around town getting rejected again and again, never accepting that he should just get a real job. Funny though that, despite being out of work for years, he always has a wad of cash in his pocket to feed the Swear Jar every time he says "fuckhead" in front of the kids, which happens so often that by the film's halfway mark the jar has enough cash to send the wife to the spa while Aiden takes the kids on a road trip. All this despite the central plot point of the family being broke! HELLOOOOOOOOOO?
The kids go to a private Jewish academy at the behest of Aiden's dad, Gabe (Mandy Patinkin, slumming it big time), who also pays the tuition. A diagnosis of cancer forces Gabe to cut off the tuition so he can pay for New Age treatments which don't even work - if they did, we wouldn't get that all-important phone call scene, after all - and Aiden is suddenly in crisis mode. Unwilling to send the kids to public school, jobless Aiden takes up home schooling them and fails miserably, further proving that he is a massive, horrible moron. Reminder: He's supposed to be our hero.
What an awful, terrible film this is. No one can deny that Mr. Braff is an auteur, but here's the thing: so to is Polish/Martian filmmaker Tommy Wisseau, and no one is claiming "The Room" as a good movie. The only difference between "Wish" and "Room" is the fact that Mr. Wisseau's film is so bad it earns tidal waves of derisive laughter to cement itself as a midnight movie staple, whereas "Wish I Was Here" is so bad it'll make audiences grit their teeth as their knuckles turn white from furiously gripping the seat in an attempt to keep themselves from walking out on the misbegotten twelve dollar investment they made in a ticket.
Mr. Braff is fond of splashing the screen with imagery that is meant to be profound, but instead comes across as the fantastical ravings of a ten year old. The film constantly returns (including, jarringly, in the very first scene) to a fantasy of Aiden dressed up as a sword-wielding astronaut fleeing a Darth Vader type who ultimately turns out to be his dad. I have no idea what it means, or is supposed to mean, or more importantly why Mr. Braff thought it was worth hiring a team of CGI artists to animate these sequences. But I do know that it obviously means something to Braff, and I also know that that is sad. And then there's the pink wig, which Aiden allows his daughter to purchase because, cloyingly enough, "it's just as unique as you are", and the uncle's space suit, which is only there so Aiden can look at him through the domed helmet and say "the worst thing about hiding in a fishbowl is that everyone can see you". Please, Mr. Braff, locate a spoon and proceed to gag me with it.
Making matters somehow even worse is the fact that Aiden is a horrible person. The Jewish grandfather is only there so Aiden, an atheist, can be disturbingly anti-Semitic, which combines with moments of outright racism to form a swirling vortex of hate which is meant to be our sympathetic hero. Aiden also fully expects his wife to support the family so he can goof off, which is spelled out in a scene that Mr. Braff has the audacity to end with Aiden tearfully saying"But what about my dreams?". Yes, downtrodden wife, bust your hump alongside your sexually harassing partner in a thankless job so your man-child husband can chase his dream of playing "Random Crew Member Number One" in the debut episode of the new Star Trek series.
I am not fucking kidding.
Between his prior directorial effort "Garden State", his starring turn in the "pretty people with problems" movie "The Last Kiss", and now "Wish I Was Here" Zach Braff has proven himself to be a self-obsessed, self-pitying, whiny and thoroughly unlikeable presence. He has no sense of humor about these petty things that mean so much to him, which only makes him seem even more childish (if that's possible), and his futile attempts at making his own version of a self-reflexive 1970s Woody Allen-ish movie only serve to make him more annoying. You are not that talented, sir, and your insistence on believing you are was once pitiable, but by now it's just infuriating.
The good news is that the need for Kickstarter makes it clear that Mr. Braff is having a hard time finding complete funding in Hollywood. Now we just need his fans to go broke and maybe then we'll never have to see his solipsistic drivel darken our collective doorsteps ever again.
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domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 6:42 pm
Re: Forthcoming Confabulous Fabtraption of Zach Braff
But other than that you'd agree this is a pretty great movie, right