Laura Blum

Wish I Was Here is Zach Braff's first movie since he came out with Garden State a decade ago. You might say the actor-turned-director-writer-producer has grown sentimental in his late 30s.

With his new effort, Braff has been guileless -- or manipulative -- enough to wear his heart on his sleeve. He aligns himself with a branch of family comedy that admits bodily functions and ethnic flourishes as grist for laughs, yet readily veers into pathos. 

Part sitcom, part indie drama and part spiritual retreat, the result is a matter of taste. Many moviegoers, and more critics, deplore maudlin displays, and yet Kleenex sales remain brisk. Luckily, Braff vests his sap with a sincere search for meaning. He brings it off often enough to keep the story engaging, and even at times deeply resonant.

Co-written with his brother Adam, the film centers on Aidan Bloom (Braff), an unemployed actor whose last gig was a bit part on a dandruff commercial. No one knows this better than his breadwinner wife Sarah (Kate Hudson), unless it's Aidan's father Saul (Mandy Patinkin). The aging former microbiologist rarely misses achance to disparage Aidan and his supergeek brother Noah (Josh Gad), and to needle them about their failures. "Nice little slice of Mumbai here," he says of Aidan's neglected SoCal backyard. Lord knows what words he'd find to put down the trailer Noah calls home, were Noah only on speaking terms with him. Too bad Saul's wife is no longer around to "(bring) out the best in him."

The devoutly Jewish patriarch has commandeered the education of Aidan's children, Grace (Joey King) and Tucker (Pierce Gagnon), bankrolling their private religious day school and creating what Aidan dubs "two indoctrinated matzoh balls." Yet bacon-and-cheeseburger-loving Aidan will soon come to miss the Yeshiva and its sermonizing rabbis when Saul learns that his cancer has returned. He shunts the grandkids' tuition money toward experimental treatments, leaving Aidan to try his hand at home-schooling. Suffice it to say the novice instructor's disciplinary methods include duct tape and Roots reruns. When push comes to shove he even pulls "a Mr. Miyagi” demonstrating a swift home repair move.

At their best, Braff's forays into humor add welcome leavening just when the emotional tone threatens to sag too low. He might have taken the cue from Saul's observation, "Eventually things get tragic enough, and they circle back to comedy."

The line was delivered when Sarah paid her father-in-law a visit at the hospital. She hoped to nudge him toward expressing fatherly sentiments to his sons that "will shape who they are as men." Hudson's performance here and throughout the film is a moving reminder of her capacity for dramatic restraint. She plays the mature adult whose dreams -- whatever they may be -- have been eclipsed by her family responsibilities and the soul-crushing job she endures to meet them. Her loving if blinkered husband is more clueless about her dissatisfaction than he might care to be.

A running theme throughout the movie is the superhero fantasy that Aidan has retreated into since adolescence. Braff intercuts visions of his character's space-suited savior act to illustrate his mystical quest. Captured in mock earnestness, these Star Wars-tinged sequences advance Aidan's stunted coming-of-age with deft visual whimsy. Nonetheless, one of the film's most affecting scenes finds the near-midlifer consulting a rabbi about his search for a higher power. Issues of belief and moral guidance both unite and divide the featured parents, spouses, siblings and clergy as they grapple with unfolding life and death.

The "Here" of Wish I Was Here is debatable. Shot in and around Los Angeles, it tweaks the world of moral certainties yet also embraces its virtues. What justifies faith? How to stay present in relationships? When are you happiest? What does it mean to grieve loss? The questions keep coming as Wish I Was Here juggles multiple plotlines here, there and around.

It took chutzpah (and partly crowdsourced funds), for Braff to lather up such a sudsy, searching affair. The former "Scrubs" star demonstrates that he can jerk a tear from the very eyes he sets rolling. And even while drawing a belly laugh.