Wish I Was Here
Cast: Zach
Braff, Josh Gad, Kate Hudson,
Mandy Patinkin
Director: Zach Braff
106 mins
Mandy Patinkin
Director: Zach Braff
106 mins
Zach Braff's latest piece of work - Wish I
Was Here stars the director (ie Braff) as a perpetually shell-shocked man-child
who doesn't know he's a perpetually shell-shocked man-child.
The lead role is of this bloke who has an acting career that's going nowhere. He has no marketable skills, and little or no clue about how his family individuals are.
He has a long-suffering wife, Sarah (Kate Hudson), who loves him despite his unforgivable ignorance of her daily life; two wisecracking children, Grace (Joey King) and Tucker (Pierce Gagnon); a judgemental father, Gabe (Mandy Patinkin); and a brother, Noah, who's even more of a mess (Josh Gad).
The main plot is hard to determine. It's either Braff's spiritual journey, his inability to lower his pride to keep his children in their beloved Jewish private school when money gets tight, or his struggle to keep what's left of his family together. Also worth mentioning is his apparent lack of income, but magically, every time he utters an expletive, a massive stash of cash builds up (from where you might well ask) in an enormous Swear Jar. All of this is meant to intertwine, but this is hindered by each scene melding into the next none of which ever gets resolved. Two of the strongest sequences in the film are the conversations between other people. Sarah's appeal to Gabe to bond with his sons before it's too late, and Grace's plea to Noah to bond with his father before it's too late. Unfortunately, the film’s writers (Braff and his brother Adam) bog down the rest of the script with ridiculously random idiocy. Why for example, is he surfing all of a sudden? What's with those poetry recitals? Why does a girl committed to a strict orthodox religion wear a purple wig? Why does Braff keep fantasising about a robot orb thing following him around?
Patinkin and King offer up the best performances, the former near-flawless as a disappointed father facing death with wry humour, the latter showing enormous potential as a young girl reconciling her orthodox Jewish values with the onset of adulthood. Gagnon manages to temper his "precocious child" role with just enough boys-will-be-boys behaviour to be convincing. Hudson and Gad are both unremarkable, and as for Braff, you could replace him with a sleepwalking nonentity and nothing would be lost. As for the soundtrack, you will almost certainly be aware of Paul Simon and Coldplay - and that's probably the only music Braff's ever heard. If it wasn’t for Patinkin, this could’ve been even more disastrously dull.
The lead role is of this bloke who has an acting career that's going nowhere. He has no marketable skills, and little or no clue about how his family individuals are.
He has a long-suffering wife, Sarah (Kate Hudson), who loves him despite his unforgivable ignorance of her daily life; two wisecracking children, Grace (Joey King) and Tucker (Pierce Gagnon); a judgemental father, Gabe (Mandy Patinkin); and a brother, Noah, who's even more of a mess (Josh Gad).
The main plot is hard to determine. It's either Braff's spiritual journey, his inability to lower his pride to keep his children in their beloved Jewish private school when money gets tight, or his struggle to keep what's left of his family together. Also worth mentioning is his apparent lack of income, but magically, every time he utters an expletive, a massive stash of cash builds up (from where you might well ask) in an enormous Swear Jar. All of this is meant to intertwine, but this is hindered by each scene melding into the next none of which ever gets resolved. Two of the strongest sequences in the film are the conversations between other people. Sarah's appeal to Gabe to bond with his sons before it's too late, and Grace's plea to Noah to bond with his father before it's too late. Unfortunately, the film’s writers (Braff and his brother Adam) bog down the rest of the script with ridiculously random idiocy. Why for example, is he surfing all of a sudden? What's with those poetry recitals? Why does a girl committed to a strict orthodox religion wear a purple wig? Why does Braff keep fantasising about a robot orb thing following him around?
Patinkin and King offer up the best performances, the former near-flawless as a disappointed father facing death with wry humour, the latter showing enormous potential as a young girl reconciling her orthodox Jewish values with the onset of adulthood. Gagnon manages to temper his "precocious child" role with just enough boys-will-be-boys behaviour to be convincing. Hudson and Gad are both unremarkable, and as for Braff, you could replace him with a sleepwalking nonentity and nothing would be lost. As for the soundtrack, you will almost certainly be aware of Paul Simon and Coldplay - and that's probably the only music Braff's ever heard. If it wasn’t for Patinkin, this could’ve been even more disastrously dull.
The Equalizer
Cast: Denzel Washington, Martin Coskas, Grace Moretz
Director: Antoine Fuqua
135 mins
The basic premise of the absurd 1980s TV series "The Equalizer" was just bland nonsense depicting an everyman/average Joe extracting his interpretation of justice on the nasty types out there - and here - in making the transfer to cinema, it appears to have survived with all of that bland tosh firmly intact.This all-bangs-bells and whistles outing, whilst certainly not ineptly made or awful - is simply just forgettable. Part of the problem is just plain familiarity with the rhythm and construction of the film. Denzel Washington just plays, well, Denzel Washington, essentially. It's a very mild riff on the persona that he's firmly established over the last 20 years, and the one thing that distinguishes him is the way he manages to think his way through a fight visually before it happens.
Two other, similar recent examples are "Jack Reacher" and more specifically, the "Sherlock Holmes" films with Robert Downey Jr. It felt fresh when Guy Ritchie did it, but at this point, it doesn't seem like that's enough to hang a big budget feature on, and there's really nothing else to recommend about "The Equalizer." Antoine Fuqua has this ultra-violence itch he seems unable to avoid scratching - something that also marred his previous flick "Olympus Has Fallen". For the most part, this film chugs along in a sort of amiable low-key mode, but every now and then, when it erupts into bloodshed, it is almost absurdly violent, and it's preposterous as entertainment when it becomes so savagely bloodthirsty.
They could have called the film "The Handyman," and it would have been just as appropriate a title as the one they’ve used here. No one actually uses the term "equalizer" in the entire film, nor mentions anyone getting equalized. If the point of the film is that this someone is a guy who helps people who can't help themselves in any way, then the various people he helps in the film are to, be frank, just a bunch of tedious mediocrities.
It would help if there was more depth and substance to the script, and Martin Csokas for example is utterly appalling as the baddie. He plays it so big and so broad that it would only really work if he turned out to be a genuine threat, the immovable object to Denzel's unstoppable force – but he is ultimately of no consequence whatsoever, as indeed, sadly, is the entire film.
