Wish I Was Here

There's something wrong when Braff, hot off a hit TV series and directing the assured debut that was Garden State, has to wait ten years to get his next film in the cinema. And that's only thanks to Kickstarter. Likeable, well-meaning and obviously dealing with issues close to the writer-director's heart the problems with Wish I Was Here aren't a lack of budget, casting issues or any other production difficulties - the problems were on paper to begin with.

Braff plays a struggling actor whose lack of income troubles wife Hudson; they can only afford the private Jewish school for their two children (Joey King and Pierce Gagnon) because traditional dad Patinkin pays the fees, but his cancer has returned and needs all the money he can muster for experimental treatment. Faced with increasing financial difficulties, addressing his daddy issues, and convincing loser brother Gad to visit the old man before he shuffles off this mortal coil, Braff becomes determined not to be the dad his father spends time with his kids.

While admirable that Braff attempts a grand scope, he is trying to do too much. With a story about two brothers finding some common ground, coming to terms with a dying father's lack fatherly instincts, a secular dad understanding his religious daughter, and how financial pressure affects a marriage (Hudson, by the way, has her own problems at work), Braff spreads himself too thin and the tone suffers. The script (penned with brother Adam) is a bit hodgepodge, veering from light family comedy (a rabbi crashes a Segway) to taut drama (hospital bedside scene), with Braff sometimes guilty of bullying emotion into the film.

And sometimes he just plain drops the ball. At one point Braff happens across an old photo of his dad beside a Cadillac - the only photo where his father looks happy - and it inspires Braff to bluff a car salesman (Scrubs buddy Donald Faison) into letting him test drive a flash car. To take his dying dad out in, right? No. Braff instead goes for a ride with his kids. What they hell? It also needlessly bends to wackiness for cheap laughs with a Comic-Con scene involving sex between costumed attendees.

But - and it's a big but - there is love and heart and honesty and sincerity here. Braff puts everything he can into what is immediately apparent is a deeply deeply personal film. And sometimes that's just enough.