Contrived

Rating: 5/10 (28 May 2005)

I wanted to like this movie. I love Zack Braff from "Scrubs." But I just don't think it lived up to the hype. I think he's a great actor, I think he's a fine director-- the film was paced pretty well, it had a nice atmosphere and a distinct visual style, he got some good performances out of his actors (at least, the ones who had something to work with). By golly, Portman, who's been complete cardboard in everything since "Beautiful Girls," was actually *charming*. But I thought the writing was clumsy. He strives so hard for whimsy, that he belies believability and emotional depth. I understand what he was trying to portray and I think most of us in our twenties and beyond can relate to clinging to memories of our pre-adulthood and returning home to find old friends stuck in a rut-- but I just didn't see it. I didn't see the relationship between him and his old friends and his attachment to his home, I wasn't convinced that Portman's character "changed his life" in 3 days. His father's character was practically non-existent. He is obviously attempting to emulate subversive gems like "The Graduate" and "Harold and Maude" but-- where these films were droll with the point that life sometimes is that way-- Braff seems to make the mistake of being quirky for the sake of making the film quirky. Examples-- a friend who is independently wealthy from his patent on "silent Velcro," a love interest who lives in a house with a giant hamster run and was formerly a skating crocodile, a revelation about his feelings towards his mother's funeral over a graveyard for hamsters, a pursuit that ends in a boat next to an abyss-- how much of this sort of stuff really rings true for most people? And the dialogue, oy: characters are constantly breaking into speeches that sound like they were ripped off the pages of someone's WeBlog (Braff's, I would wager). When I say contrived, I mean that the impression that I get was that, in writing this script, Braff thought to himself, "I want to make a quirky, subversive film in the style of 'The Graduate' about a young man who returns to his home and undergoes a groundbreaking personal change," and, rather than allowing these elements to come through by creating convincing characters and character interactions, he tries to directly manipulate it with preciously quirky details and a hipster soundtrack. In brief, I think Braff is well-suited for directing but he may be better off using other people's screenplays for the while.