Pugh’s performance not enough to save overwrought addiction drama
Writer/director Zach Braff hasn’t made a solo feature film since 2004’s Garden State (2014’s Wish I Was Here had a co-writer), so you’d think that a 19 year incubation period would be enough for him to craft something truly great. But sadly, that’s not the case: A Good Person, his newest picture, is a disappointing misfire.
Braff wrote the film specifically for his ex-girlfriend, the terrific Florence Pugh (Don’t Worry Darling; Midsommar; Lady Macbeth), and she’s easily the movie’s biggest selling point. Unfortunately, her performance alone, strong as it is, can’t transcend the heavy-handed and clichéd script.
Braff has assembled a stellar cast here. Besides Pugh, Morgan Freeman and Molly Shannon have major roles, and both also valiantly try to rise above the prosaic material. Even the gravitas of Freeman’s somber baritone voice-over opening the film is confusing: we half expect to hear him start telling us about Andy Dufresne. Instead, he begins a monologue about the appeal of model trains, intoning dramatically that “in life, nothing is as neat and tidy.” Really? Well, Braff’s picture sure is: that line proves ironic, as Braff’s movie concludes in the neatest, tidiest way possible.
But before that nicely packaged ending, what we get is a story about addiction, recovery, grief, and redemption that doesn’t feel particularly fresh. Pugh is Allison, engaged to Nathan (Chinaza Uche), whose sister and brother-in-law are in her car when Allison looks down at her phone for a split second for directions, and boom — a tragic car accident leaves her in pain and addicted to Oxy, her two passengers dead, and their teenage daughter Ryan (Celeste O’Connor) orphaned. Ryan’s grandfather Daniel (Freeman), a recovering alcoholic, becomes Ryan’s guardian. In one of the film’s many coincidental moments, Daniel runs into Allison at an AA meeting. The movie meanders from there, with the characters experiencing various moments of guilt, denial, recrimination, anger, and substance abuse sobriety and relapse.
All this melodrama is nothing that hasn’t already been explored in better movies like Beautiful Boy or Ben is Back, but I will give Braff props on one count: this picture is one of the few addiction movies I’ve seen that features a parent who actually enables her child’s addiction instead of going the tough love, zero-tolerance route (see: Four Good Days). Shannon, as Allison’s mother Diane, loves her daughter, but is at a loss as to how to best help her, and Shannon’s nuanced portrayal of a confused mother making some questionable decisions elicits both our empathy and our frustration.
Aside from that, though, there’s not much else here that warrants recommending the film. Braff has an idea worth examining: What does it mean to be a good person? But his story is so contrived that his central question becomes lost in a sea of unbelievable moments and stagy dialogue. If anything, the film succeeds mightily as a grim PSA for not using your cell phone while driving, so at least there’s that.
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A Good Person opens today at Bay Area theaters.
