Zac Braff’s follow-up to Garden State may have received slight bias before anyone even saw it, as this is the movie where Braff raised 2 million on Kick Starter to make it…even though I’m sure he has that much money left over from the Scrubs days, and really should have used his own bank account. [Kick Starter isn’t supposed to be shitty-movie insurance for people who’ve already made it in Hollywood, it’s supposed to be for people who could never make a movie any other way and have no connections, so I’m not sure why everyone from Kristen Bell to Don Cheadle just doesn’t write their own damn checks.] Luckily, the movie isn’t very good on its own terms.
What Works: The story is about a struggling actor dad (Braff) married to an unrealistically better-than-him woman (Kate Hudson) who’s trying to take care of his ailing though still strict-Jewish father (Mandy Patinkin, who could play a dying sour-head in his sleep), get his goofy brother (Josh Gad) to acknowledge reality, and get the money to send his kids to a Jewish school. The best thing in Garden State was Natalie Portman, and the best thing in this movie is Kate Hudson. Braff gets the best performance from her in ages, and her wised-up sunniness reminds you of why she became a star in the first place. The three best scenes in the movie are her trying to talk a man into being a better person. Of course, Braff is only in one of them…
What Doesn’t Work: Is Braff really a leading man? No, since he doesn’t have much true presence onscreen. Is he really much of a character actor? No, since he’s largely playing himself. It’s telling that he’s barely been the lead in a project he hasn’t created, and the few that he has been in never made any impact (a few didn’t even get a theatrical release at all). When Braff was getting going, people used to compare him to the far-better Jason Bateman, but Braff is more like the self-righteous part of Jon Stewart only with no substantial targets to project his sanctimonious aspects at.
There’s a hole at the center of this scattershot film, and whenever Braff’s not on screen we get involved in the subplots to varying degrees (Hudson more than Patinkin, Patinkin more than Gad, Gad more than whether Braff’s kids will be able to stay in a Jewish school or not). And the movie’s non-secular aspects of Judaism never come off as specific enough, there’s a generic quality in those scenes (the crusty old Rabbi, the frowning on Braff’s humor, the passionless reciting of traditions) that makes you wonder what it really means to Braff…or doesn’t mean. Maybe the biggest problem with this film is that you’re not clear on exactly what he’s saying, and maybe he’s not clear on exactly what he wants to say.
What I Would Have Done Differently: See the last sentence directly before this one.