Zach plays Aidan, a struggling actor who is married to the lovely Kate Hudson and has two kids who have more than a bit of stage school about them. Zach can’t get an acting job and has money worries. His Dad, Saul off ‘Homeland’ is paying for his grandchildren’s orthodox Jewish education but has to pull the plug owing to the treatment costs for his aggressive cancer. Kate is working at the Water Board and is being harassed by a creepy co-worker who has a talking penis.
Zach has a friend in that ‘Bazinga’ guy whom he sees at auditions, including one for an African American part where he is rightly beaten for it by Stanley out of ‘The Office’. Despite his lovely wife and kids Zach is unfulfilled and escapes into a fantasy world where he runs about in a spacesuit followed by a helpful drone sidekick. He also has a brother who is a waste of space, but has ambitions to make a kick ass Comic-Con outfit with the help of his useful HUD display which finds parts for him in the junk pile.
With him being unable to meet the fees, Zach takes his kids out of school and enjoys some quality time with them as they learn about life and their heritage whilst standing on rocks and fixing a fence.
Kate meanwhile is resentful of her crappy job and that Zach is using her income to pursue his dream of being an actor - she didn’t sign up for that. Things take a turns for the worse with Saul's health and Zach has to try and repair both his and his brother’s relationships with their dying Dad, whilst also trying to save his marriage and deal with his wife’s employment issues. Can he find contentment in his frankly over privileged life?
I enjoyed this ‘slice of life’ but it was a bit tiresome in places with Zach not knowing how well he had it. That was part of the point, but with Kate Hudson welcoming you home with a vest top and no bra it was hard to be sympathetic to the needy Zach. Kate was good but she didn’t look like a harassed Mom of two kids in a dead-end job. She looked like she’d walked off a modelling set most of the time, and although we were grateful for her presence her issues didn’t ring true either.
Better was Saul whose voice got frailer with each passing scene. His acceptance of his fucked up offspring was as touching as it was unbelievable. The laughs were mild at best and you’d say the whole thing was more affecting than humorous. I did like the scene in the Aston Martin dealership where a test drive was given as the salesman though the daughter's wig was due to cancer and not because of some Jewish tradition.
There was a lot of Jewishness in the film, which was fine, but it did make it very personal to the lead and made it a bit inaccessible to those of us who don’t have an intimate knowledge of the Torah or an interest in chanting. I get it that this was a necessary backdrop to the father son dynamic but it was overdone.
Overall this was an enjoyable trip in the California sunshine. There were no great learnings to be had, just some growth and a bit of redemption with a couple of smiles thrown in.
You could do worse, but you could do a lot better too.
Best Bit : Anything With Kate Please! ‘W’ Rating 16/23
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