“A Good Person” (2023) is the third movie that “Scrubs” Zach Braff wrote and fourth that he directed. After a car accident, Allison (Florence Pugh) falls apart, and Daniel (Morgan Freeman) tries to help her pick up the pieces. If your girlfriend is Florence Pugh, even if you are not a filmmaker, it behooves you to become one. Pugh also wrote songs and sang in the film.
Given the choice to see a screening of “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” (2023) and “A Good Person,” I chose the prior because I was more likely to pay and see the second, but either choice is fine. I have loved Pugh since “Lady Macbeth” (2016), and she is one of the best living actors. I loved Braff in “Scrubs,” but I have only seen “Garden State” (2004), which is Braff’s debut writing and directing movie, and I thought he was a better director than writer and actor in that order. He punked out on tackling his character’s disturbing backstory and opening numbness.
I am going to deliver the bad news first. Without the cast, “A Good Person” would be a Lifetime movie or omit the cursing and sexual situations, a Hallmark or CBS Sunday television movie. From the opening scene of Allison singing, being the life of the party and in love, anyone who has ever watched a movie will know exactly where the movie is headed. The messiness makes it an indie and sets it apart, but Braff’s need for romance and a pat happy ending feels contrived and cheats the film of feeling like real life. I did not hate the romantic storyline because Allison’s fated love interest Nathan (Chinaza Uche) is an interesting character whom I wish played a bigger role. Braff delivers his strongest visuals when he is depicting scenes about love or sexual attraction. I totally misread a scene where Allison goes to a concert and links eyes with one of the musicians as a potential love interest. If Pugh was not in the movie, I would have preferred Nathan as the protagonist because his story is the most unique and counterintuitive, but Braff is determined to find a way to get Pugh and Freeman to dominate the movie, which is not a bad bet. To get them there, he has to fridge a couple of characters, make them as appealing as possible so we will feel their loss as much as possible and get the tropes rolling so Pugh and Freeman can deliver these long monologues about….
Addiction! I try not to watch previews or see any promotional materials for movies because if I see too much, the movie’s story will be ruined before I see it, and every movie deserves to be viewed as it was originally intended: a complete product arranged in a specific sequence of scenes. Braff’s interview in “People” implied that he was inspired to make “A Good Person” after the death of his father, sister and friend, Nick Cordero, especially since he wrote it during the pandemic shutdown. I came for death and grief, not guilt and addiction, which are valid themes to explore, just not the ones that I am interested in or tackling now. Braff deserves kudos for hammering home that addiction is not a moral failing, but self-medicating to treat psychological, not physical pain. The film depicts multiple types of addiction and flirts with going to some bleak territory before rushing back to its Rated R “This Is Us” inspirational vibe.
Braff is a prose dumper, and though it works, it is a cheat for a filmmaker to cram in so much backstory into dialogue and not find a more organic way to show it. The opening scene with the classic Freeman narration setting the stage did not have as much impact for me as when Daniel showed Allison his train set then contrasted his three-dimensional autobiography with the reality. I love intergenerational friendships, and while it was still telling more than showing, it worked and gave us a breather without departing from the theme. I love Molly Shannon, but using her oblivious drunk overtures in the backdrop did not work for me.
“A Good Person” is heavy handed and yet it felt weird that Braff drops all these breadcrumbs of Allison being drunk and high before the accident, working as a legal drug dealer, aka a pharmaceutical rep, and even has Allison call out her mom for her drinking, but it never crescendos. While never seeing Allison’s father works, and I liked how Braff tied up that part of the story, her mother’s unwillingness to do anything for her daughter’s health seemed like a harbinger of a more serious selfish problem in their relationship. The father’s response was irrelevant, but the fact that her mother would not consider reaching out to him to help Allison was a bigger ding than Braff intended. Braff tends to set up problematic relationships without recognizing how damaging they are.
Side note: the hardest suspension of disbelief was believing that Daniel was not a walking red flag. Braff believes that his character should be given a second chance. Freeman’s voice and acting sells him as a fundamentally old-fashioned salt of the earth character despite all evidence to the contrary. Daniel is a retired Newark cop, which Braff reads as community guardian, and self-discloses his dissolute, horrifying history. In addition to Freeman’s iconic voice, it will help if you are unfamiliar with how allegedly lecherous Freeman is because I cringed for Celeste O’Connor, who plays Ryan, Daniel’s granddaughter, having to spend so much time with him on set.
Braff is monotonous when addressing the difficult parts of life in contrast to “Garden State” where it was his strongest visual asset, but when he mixes the sweet and sour beats, he shines. A confrontation between Ryan, Daniel and Allison goes from the height of melodrama to awkward politeness. A train meeting of errors uses a slight camera tilt to reveal the punchline—more of this please. The best scene in “A Good Person” is when Allison goes to a dive bar, runs into a couple of locals that she went to high school with and the constant shift of who has the upper hand leads to a tense closeness. The thread of threat emerges, and it is easy to see how Allison’s story could get worse. Kudos to Alex Wolff, who plays Mark, one of the bar flies, for showing that his time with Toni Collette in “Hereditary” (2018) was well spent. In a parallel universe, there is a crime drama with Allison and Mark, and it is the opposite of heartwarming.
It should not have to be a compliment, but bravo to Braff for having a cast with so many people of color. He balances a tight rope of not making Daniel into the magical Negro who makes everything better and not making Allison into the white savior who pulls the family out of their grief. There were a lot of ways that Braff could have fucked it up, but he does not. They lean on each other, but the uneasiness latent in their dynamic works. Pugh and Freeman are a great pairing. It did not work that Daniel wanted to shield Ryan from Allison, but still is the reason that they even met.
All the actors are excellent even with brief appearances. I am unfamiliar with Uche, but he has magnificent utilization of his face and projecting emotion. He is in Nicole Kidman territory. Same with O’Connor, who is stunning and luminescent for such a young person, which means she could be unstoppable in a few years.
Though a heavy-handed melodrama, “A Good Person” features some outstanding performances. If you love anyone in the cast, you must see it. Braff has taken a step back in terms of visuals, and his writing is uneven. If he was more consistent in sustaining the flashes of perfect standalone scenes, he would be unstoppable. At least he was wise enough to limit his work to behind the camera.
