Wish I Was Here (2014) poster
2014 · drama · comedy · space · music

Wish I Was Here

Directed by Zach Braff1h 46m2014
ElsewhereIMDb6.640kRT45%Metacritic43
  • measured
  • gentle
  • intimate
Movie DNA

Warm, measured, gentle drama / comedy, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Aidan Bloom, a struggling actor, father and husband, is 35 years old and still trying to find a purpose for his life. He and his wife are barely getting by financially and Aidan passes his time by fantasizing about being the great futuristic Space-Knight he'd always dreamed he'd be as a little kid. When his ailing father can no longer afford to pay for private school for his two kids and the only available public school is on its last legs, Aidan reluctantly agrees to attempt to home-school them. Through teaching them about life his way, Aidan gradually discovers some of the parts of himself he couldn't find.

Our read · Wish I Was Here (2014) reads as a warm, measured, grounded drama · comedy · space entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of Wish I Was Here

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want Braff indie warmth, dying dads, and kids asking hard life questions.

ends warmit stays with yousteady all the waygrips by minute 20attention 3/5earns its length
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around

Skip it tonightSkip if Garden State earnestness or cancer-family plots feel too precious.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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