Craig D. Lindsey
“Misery parade.”
Those are the two words that kept appearing in my head as I watched Zach Braff’s A Good Person. Yes, that dopey-looking dude from Scrubs – who was briefly considered the Next Great Filmmaker when he dropped the divisively quirky Sundance favorite Garden State nearly 20 years ago – has made another New Jersey-set film set that’s supposed to give you all the feels. But really, all this dreary-ass slog did was piss me off.
Florence Pugh, who had a relationship with the forty-something Braff that most of social media didn’t approve of, stars as Allison, a piano-playing pharmaceutical rep who’s in an annoyingly loving relationship with fiance Nathan (Chinaza Uche). That relationship gets destroyed in the movie’s first ten minutes, when Allison is driving with Nathan’s sister and brother-in-law and they get in a car accident that leaves Allison injured and her passengers dead.
Cut to a year later. A single Allison is living back home with her mother (Molly Shannon), broke, heavily addicted to Oxycontin, and riding all over Jersey on a bike. (Braff gets a lot of wide shots of Pugh cutting a corner and riding emotionally, usually set to some emo song.) After briefly smoking heroin with some riffraff she dismissed in high school, she decides to get some help and attend a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. That’s where she bumps into Nathan’s estranged father Daniel (Morgan Freeman), a former cop who’s been dying to take a drink ever since he got custody of his teenage granddaughter (Celeste O’Connor), who’s been lashing out hella hard ever since her parents died.
Person is just wall-to-wall agony, with Pugh getting the brunt of it. There’s something a bit weird about Braff writing and directing a movie where his ex-girlfriend plays someone who goes through a shitload of grief for accidentally killing two people and having the audacity to abuse drugs to dull the pain. (Braff doesn’t even deal with the whole racial aspect of it, as Pugh’s lily-white protagonist spends most of Person doing more harm than good to this dark-skinned family.) Her character starts hanging out with Freeman’s fellow tortured soul, a man who did a lot of horrible shit while under the influence. The scenes of Pugh and Freeman getting to know each other’s struggles are the best parts of the movie; their characters bond over the common ground — a regretful sadness — they both have.
Unfortunately, they’re still in a movie where their characters make stupid decisions, whether they’re under the influence or not. Pugh is mostly in a self-loathing stupor, medicating herself heavily while the other characters are seemingly nonplussed by the fact she takes drugs because she’s forever haunted by her horrible mistake. (As funny as it is watching the always lovable Shannon get wine-drunk and try to convince Pugh to go on Shark Tank with her, Shannon’s playful frivolousness seems out of place here.) Freeman plays a disciplinarian with a cruel streak, pretending to be sanctimonious when he’s just as fucked-up as his ex-future-daughter-in-law. (A scene of an inebriated, gun-wielding Freeman gives Pugh a dressing-down has to be the most pot-calling-the-kettle-black scene I’ve ever seen in a movie.)
There could’ve been a smarter, more serio-comic way for Braff to handle this story of pain, regret, and loss. Sadly, he goes the histrionic, TV-movie route. It’s like Braff saw Manchester by the Sea and decided not to do any of that shit. But even though Braff had Pugh crying and acting miserable, I can’t help thinking she still had a better time with her ex than she did working under Olivia Wilde during Don’t Worry Darling.
D+
“A Good Person” is in theaters Friday.
