{"id":25778,"date":"2014-12-15T02:38:22","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T07:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=25778"},"modified":"2017-07-21T02:48:56","modified_gmt":"2017-07-21T06:48:56","slug":"wish-i-was-here-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/15\/wish-i-was-here-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Wish I Was Here (2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When it isn\u2019t trying to be profound or reaching for metaphor and goofy Spike Jonze style photography, \u201cWish I Was Here\u201d ends up being a pretty interesting family melodrama. It\u2019s not by any means Braff\u2019s masterpiece. I think we\u2019re a long way from ever seeing one. Here he repeats the same beats of his former indie drama \u201cGarden State,\u201d ad nauseum. He\u2019s either intent on reminding people why the aforementioned was so good, or he\u2019s bereft of offering anything new. There\u2019s Jim Parsons, a fractured relationship with a father figure, the ghost of a dead mother, Braff\u2019s character is an actor, and there be plenty \u2018o montages set to indie rock music.<\/p>\n

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Braff also is a big fan of coming of age clich\u00e9s, including a sequence involving the characters driving a fancy car, and the whole metaphor of a character taking a plunge in to water. Aidan Bloom is a struggling actor who is finding getting menial acting jobs tougher with the broader demand for roles in the town. The pressure for a job becomes more intense when his father, who funds his children\u2019s Jewish Day School, refuses to pay for their education since his remission has ended, and his cancer is now terminal. Aidan now scrambles to find a way to school his children, all the while teaching them about life before his resentful father eventually passes away.<\/p>\n

Braff loves his indie clich\u00e9s, and it\u2019s all for the sake of a narrative about a very selfish individual who becomes less selfish by the end of the film. When we depart from him, he\u2019s still very selfish, but at least not despicable. Braff plays a character so self centered he can barely focus on his father\u2019s ailing health in the face of terminal cancer, because his dreams of being an actor. His family is looking at the face of poverty but he can\u2019t bear to get a nine to five job because his dreams of being an actor. Don\u2019t you hate when the world asks you to be responsible and consider your children and wife? Damn freeloaders.<\/p>\n

Kate Hudson\u2019s performance is surprisingly restrained and bearable as Aidan\u2019s long suffering wife who endures a terrible office job to support her family, and begins thinking about her own unfulfilled dreams. Joey King is also very charming actress who plays off of Braff well as his strictly Orthodox Jewish daughter hell bent on sticking true to her religious faith in the face of an unstable household. Especially in the face of Aidan\u2019s incessant whining about how no one supports his dreams to become an actor. \u201cWish I Was Here\u201d is sixty percent hipster indie art house junk, and forty percent actual substance that\u2019s worth watching. When it\u2019s not reminding us about why we liked the superior \u201cGarden State,\u201d it\u2019s a watchable if mediocre melodrama with entertaining quirks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it isn\u2019t trying to be profound or reaching for metaphor and goofy Spike Jonze style photography, \u201cWish I Was Here\u201d ends up being a pretty interesting family melodrama. It\u2019s not by any means Braff\u2019s masterpiece. I think we\u2019re a long way from ever seeing one. Here he repeats the same beats of his former […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[111,219,302,340],"class_list":["post-25778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-arthouse","tag-comedy","tag-drama","tag-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25780,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25778\/revisions\/25780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}