For the past century or so, films have been dedicated to the art of telling a story. Whether it’s a tale about a great train robbery, or a parable about a fish looking for his son, the story is what people typically go to the theater to see. Wish I Was Here is not someone’s story.
It’s someone’s life.
Sure, there’s a story of sorts, but there are so many different themes and ideas at play that it’s difficult to say that the film has a traditional story-based trajectory. Perhaps the closest thing to the central story is the fact that Aidan Bloom (Zach Braff) is an out of work actor that struggles to make the decision whether or not to finally call it quits on his dream.
In the meantime, we see how the pursuit of his dream hurts the people around him. His wife (Kate Hudson) is working a job she hates to provide for their two children, and his judgmental but ultimately good-hearted father (Mandy Patinkin) has cancer remission to worry about. However, Aidan sadly only seems to care about how this will impact his life.
He loves his children, but it’s clear that being a father is not necessarily what he has in mind when it comes to being a man. His idea of manlihood involves starring in his own adventure, preferably with a CGI robot partner. Yes, there is a CGI flying robot and it’s adorable.
These moments (with the spaceman and the robot) help us identify with the self-centered Aidan since, at first, it can be difficult to understand or sympathize with his point of view. His journey isn’t just about becoming a better man in his father’s eyes, it’s about him learning to become a better person altogether.
It’s complicated, but at the same time it’s simple. It’s so many things at once that once it’s allowed to distill, what we’re left with is something really remarkable.
Braff’s illustration of what it means to be a man, a father, a son a husband, and a dreamer all at the same time comes off as ultra-personal and maybe even slightly autobiographical had Braff’s career not picked up when it did.
The characters (the main characters at least) all seem so perfectly drawn out that it wouldn’t be surprising to discover that they’re based on actual real-life people in Braff’s life, and beyond that, all of the actors breathe sufficient life into their on-screen personas to make them not seem like caricatures.
Sure, there’s a whole Comic-Con segment that comes off as a little over-inflated, but when it comes back to the main family drama, everyone shows up, and everyone (especially Kate Hudson) knocks it out of the park with emotion and words that ring absolutely authentic. They aren’t writing greeting cards, they’re talking to each other. Grieving with each other. Loving each other.
It’s not all tears and mushiness, though. The tone jumps, sometimes gracefully, sometimes not, back and forth between emotional sentimentality, and unabashed silliness. It’s exactly what you would expect from a man-child mind, and in many cases, these moments help to further illustrate both Aidan’s point of view, and the sometimes-serious-sometimes-ridiculous tone of – well – life.
Although the definition of “what makes a man” that the film provides is hazy at best, it would have almost been cheating to give the audience an easy answer.The real answer, just like the movie, is so loaded, so rich, and so complex, that it’s difficult to put into words.
Grade: A-
Rated: R (for language and some sexual content)
Wish I Was Here opens today, July 18.
