Keith Phipps’ one-and-a-half-star review of Zach Braff’s latest indie dramedy, Wish I Was Here, provoked a lot of comment from Dissolve readers, many of whom seemed to have been lying in wait for a chance to jump on Braff, an actor/writer/director/producer whose arrested-adolescent earnestness rubs a lot of folks the wrong way. But some commenters pushed back a bit against the anti-Braff tide, reminding people that there was a time when it was socially acceptable to find Braff’s work on the sitcom Scrubs and the movie Garden State to be charming and sweet.

Jeremy Wingert: “If you’re a person who found any degree of emotional resonance in Garden State (as I did, despite its decided flaws, and as 86% of critics did as well) but is now, sight unseen, eagerly joining in the pitchfork-wielding mob for Wish I Was Here, please get some perspective. There are many, many more worthy targets for your vitriol than Zach Braff. He’s an actor with an actual point of view and at least a respectable degree of filmmaking prowess and (a bit more arguably) screenwriting skill. There aren’t a ton of those in Hollywood. … My comment is for those who, in their excitement to join the Zach Braff Lynch Squad, seem to have forgotten how warmly they felt toward Mr. Braff after watching Garden State ten years ago. That was a seminal film/soundtrack for a lot of people, and I can't imagine we’ve all just grown up so much that we can’t muster any residual goodwill for Braff (and for our own yesteryear epiphanies). I was 24 when I saw it, and a lot of its moments rang true for me. I’m as eager as anyone to see what 39-year-old Braff has to say about adulthood, even though the tepid-to-bad reviews have lessened my expectations a bit. But even if I dislike the film, I don’t think I’ll be inclined to turn on Braff the way the message boards are with all the incendiary rhetoric they’ve been churning out. He seems like an earnest fellow, and I tend to like earnest fellows.”

Fritz: “In a weird way, he sort of reminds me of most Kevin Smith work (Smith’s obviously way more prolific and has a few outliers in his filmography) in that he makes movies that speak intensely to people in the 15-25 year old age range, but once you’ve ventured onward into adulthood, you realize if you saw them for the first time at your current age, you probably wouldn’t like them as much (and there’s nothing particularly wrong with this). … I have no doubt that some people hated Garden State on its release, but there’s something I always find odd when a movie that has a largely positive reception with critics and the public suddenly becomes an object of pure scorn and contempt (and I’m not even a particular fan of the film - if we were rating it on a four-star scale, I’d probably give it two-and-a-half). While it’s heartwarming when the reverse happens and a movie like The Thing or Clue finds its audience and a critical reevaluation after fizzling at the box office and with critics, there’s something always meh to me when the opposite happens and you know that some of the people shitting all over it are some of the same ones who praised it in the first place.”

I think the phenomenon Fritz is describing is just an unfortunate byproduct of how the cultural discourse has developed in the Internet age. Even though we live in an era of fragmentation, where people can more easily seek out and enjoy their own niche entertainments or opinions, the conversation online often seems to presume—or to push for—a monoculture. It’s almost as though we’re all anxious for some certainty: a point of view shared so widely that dissenters are singled out as freaks or morons. Often that means that movies most people don’t feel strongly enough about either to defend or dispute get defined by a passionate few, who want to make sure that the default position on a film like Garden State is that it’s an abomination.

I saw Garden State when it came out (when I was in my mid-30s, for the record), and thought the film was mostly just okay, with a few scenes and images strong enough to suggest that Braff had real talent. I’ve always liked Braff on Scrubs too, though there his combination of good-heartedness, naïveté, and silliness works because it’s parceled out in 20-minute chunks. Still, I’m mostly on Jeremy’s side, believing that the movie business can always use more “earnest fellows,”  with distinctive points of view.

I say “mostly,” though, because I do think Braff has earned some of this backlash—not because of how he crowdfunded Wish I Was Here, or because he lacks talent, but because he represents a trend in independent filmmaking that I personally find fairly insidious. Every year at Sundance, I run across multiple plotless dramedies that either star or are directed by fairly big-name actors from TV and mainstream movies; and these films usually follow the same blueprints. They have an abstracted view of ordinary life that mocks authority and conformity while standing up for melancholy weirdos; and they deliver pat life lessons about “what’s really important.” They have a perspective that’s based not on what it actually takes to live in this world, but on what a celebrity sees.

I haven’t seen Wish I Was Here yet, but judging by Keith’s review, it follows that blueprint closely, delivering phony uplift while making some arrogant presumptions about how people should live. I still agree with Jeremy that a movie like Wish I Was Here is hardly the worst thing that a human being or even an artist can do with his time. The anti-Braff sentiment is probably stronger right now than it needs to be, and I’d love to read some thoughtful defenses of Wish I Was Here if there are any out there. But from what I’ve read so far, the opposition to this particular movie seems sincere, and properly motivated. Calling someone out on their bullshit is one of the best things the Internet does.

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