Zach Braff sprinkles grief with cuteness in A Good Person

Does Florence Pugh need to fire her agent or start listening to her agent? Either way, the actress could use a new strategy. Last year, the gossip-plagued Don’t Worry Darling proved a garish non-event. Now no less flawed is A Good Person, the candyfloss tale of loss and addiction, written and directed by Zach Braff.

Certain fortysomethings may see that as a Bat Signal. Back in 2004, Braff made Garden State, a twee indie movie with an outsize cultural footprint. Braff himself starred as a sad-eyed New Jersey man-child, but the spotlight fell too on Natalie Portman, cast as a young woman whose eccentric antics defined a much-mocked trope of 2000s American cinema. She was the Manic Pixie Dream Girl: kooky, quirky and devoted to her hopeless boyfriend.

A Good Person often suggests that Braff, now 47, has been comatose since. The setting remains suburban New Jersey. And while we and the director have aged a couple of decades, his choice of protagonist has not. Pugh’s character Allison is in her mid-twenties and a bundle of live-wire vibes.

And yet at last reflecting changed times, she is not here to save a lost-soul boyfriend — but to be lost herself. The cause comes five minutes in, when her car is involved in a horrific crash. Her two passengers are killed: the sister and brother-in-law of her fiancé Nathan (Chinaza Uche). The deaths orphan the couple’s teenage daughter Ryan (Celeste O’Connor), left to live with her gruff ex-cop grandfather Daniel (Morgan Freeman). 

That makes a lot of characters for the film to hand a lot of grief. But Allison’s remains the central — often exclusive — focus.

Her pain is addressed with OxyContin. (Again, a repeat prescription: Braff’s character in Garden State took lithium for depression.) Early on, the script gestures vaguely at the wider US opioid crisis but, Lord knows, Braff is no social realist. The stuff of addiction and loss is instead sprinkled with cuteness, then smothered with a custard of speeches about us all being works-in-progress. And the cure comes out of the movie-magic medicine chest: an unlikely friendship.

The friend is Daniel. Re-connecting with Allison, his rage over her possible manslaughter of his daughter varies according to Braff’s story arc. Other family members are still more forgiving. And so a film that begins out of its depth just keeps on swimming.

Braff clearly has good intentions, but the road to hell is tough on his actors. Still, Freeman is craftsman enough to sell even the hokiest line in the moment. And Pugh remains a bona fide film star. Just one in need of better films.

★★☆☆☆

In cinemas from March 24