Nice. Nice. Not thrilling…but nice.
In all seriousness, it was fine. Zach Braff is talented, and he’s terrific on Scrubs, the best current sitcom on television. But a) his character was far too one-note; b) Natalie Portman was terrible; c) you can’t have an actor with the commanding presence of Ian Holm in your film and underuse him as greivously as this movie did; d) I have yet to deduce the purpose of the best-friend character; d) congratulations, Zach! You have hip taste in music! The weekly John Cusack Club for Actors Who Love Showin’ Off Their Awesome Taste in Music meeting convenes in fifteen minutes, at the usual meeting place of UP MY ASS; e) a lot of it felt a little gratuitous, like a film student who has a great idea and shoehorns it into his senior project screenplay regardless of whether or not it really works with the tone or technique of the rest of the film simply because he wants to get all his good ideas in there (I know what I’m talking about here, believe me)–the African adoptee, the plane-crash fantasy, the slo-mo party, the people who lived in the quarry, yelling in the rain, the rich inventor friend, the Method Man/hotel scene, etc.; f) you’ve got to have a lot of faith in the might and majesty of the Shins in order to make the liking of them a crucial plot point–I, alas, do not share that faith; g) I know this isn’t the movie’s fault, but I can’t help but unfavorably compare it to Eternal Sunshine literally every time I think about it.