A Good Person

Grade: B+

The harder a movie tries, and the more it shoots for the stars, the bigger the laughingstock it is if it doesn’t work. You’ve seen The Room, right? There’s a million ways A Good Person could have been a goofy failure if it were in the hands of lesser talent, but it successfully stays afloat. It is stuffed with details and drama and trauma and tragedy and coincidences – not to mention crying, in almost every scene. It’s a spinning top, frantically swirling all over the place, Tasmanian Devil-style. Sometimes it knocks a couple things down, but nothing that was a dealbreaker. Writer/director Zach Braff (Garden State, Wish I Was Here) is establishing himself as a budding Steven Spielberg, while at the same time solidifying a signature style. He seems to specialize in darkly funny reflective character studies – lots of greys and fall colors in the cinematography, while featuring loads of wistful acoustic coffee shop songs on the soundtrack. His stamp is all over this.

Florence Pugh is one of the best actresses working today. She blew me away in Midsommar, the one that put her on the map. She earned that Oscar nomination in Little Women, and by the time we got to Black Widow, I’d decided that I would see her in anything. I was slightly disappointed with Don’t Worry Darling, and The Wonder let me down even more. But here, she has a role and a project she can really sink her teeth into, even if occasionally it’s the scenery. She plays Allison, who is happily engaged to Nathan when the movie opens. The family loves her, they are madly in love with each other, she’s a hit at the engagement party, playing original songs on the piano (written by Pugh). Braff plays up how well everything is going, which makes it all the more crushing when the inevitable other shoe drops. Allison is driving to New York City to try on wedding dresses and maybe see a Broadway show, when she gets into a terrible car crash. She was looking at her phone while driving. She survives with some injuries, but her two passengers don’t make it.

We’d potentially be talking involuntary vehicular manslaughter charges, but that goes on by, wholly unacknowledged. Cut to a year later, and she is single again, living at home with her single mother (Molly Shannon, in perhaps her best performance). She’s not working, and is addicted to pain pills, which she washes down with alcohol. Finally willing to try AA, the first meeting she goes to just so happens to be the same group Nathan’s father Daniel (Morgan Freeman) regularly attends.

It’s hard to know when to stop the plot summary with a movie like this, because so much happens and continues to happen. Conversations between characters are surprisingly forthright and blunt. I give Braff credit for letting the elephants in the room breathe. Freeman gets a chance to both “play Morgan Freeman” and give us new choices we rarely or never see from him. His character’s passion is creating an elaborate village around the train set in his basement, which gives Freeman a convenient opportunity to narrate and wax poetic about the train’s journey. And you just KNOW he will give an impassioned speech in that AA meeting – talking about a “highah powah.” But his arc takes detours that I wouldn’t have predicted, or thought the movie had the courage to follow through on.

The supporting cast is all effective. Chinaza Uche is endearing as Nathan, and has great teeth. Celeste O’Connor as Nathan’s niece gets an emotional workout. Alex Wolff (Old, Pig, Hereditary) is unfortunately only in one scene, but makes an impression in it. Not everything rings true; what are the odds that all those characters would show up at the same place, right on time, in the climactic scene? It’s also pretty unbelievable and abnormal that these people would forgive and become friends given everything that’s transpired, but then, there is little to nothing normal about their situation.

Sometimes I thought those test tubes I often talk about would shatter. There were moments that didn’t work, and others that worked in spite of the movie’s cliches – then it started to work BECAUSE of them. I’m not sure how likely the optimistic ending would be, but then you have to remember that the conclusion we are hoping for hasn’t happened yet, but still could. A Good Person is a movie that blooms. I hope it does well. I hope you see it. I hope you enjoy it.

Grade: B+