The tagline on the poster for writer-director Zach Braff’s contrived, heavy-handed and tragedy-soaked drama “A Good Person” reads, “Sometimes we find hope where we least expect it.” Well, that’s true, but it’s kind of a fortune-cookie, greeting-card philosophy — and while we can’t fault the filmmaker for the marketing, that slogan is indicative of the well-meaning but ultimately hollow nature of the work itself.
We know we’re in for some Major Life Lessons from the moment Morgan Freeman’s Daniel tinkers with his elaborate, years-in-the-making model railway setup and talks in voice-over about how you can control the miniature figures and the imagined lives in this basement universe, unlike the messy and painful realities of actual life, where things rarely turn out the way things want to be.
After a rather confusing prologue where we’re just starting to figure out the relationships between all the characters, there’s a horrific accident when Florence Pugh’s Allison gets distracted looking at her phone and plows into a construction crane, resulting in the deaths of her fiancé’s sister and husband.
Fast forward a few years, and while Allison keeps on saying “It wasn’t my fault” whenever someone mentions the accident (she says it so many times we get it, it WAS her fault), she’s clearly and deeply damaged, having spiraled into a self-destructive addiction to alcohol and oxycontin. (“Turns out the opiate of the masses is opium,” says Allison to an old friend who works in the pharmaceutical industry.) The engagement is long off, Allison is living with her mother (a wonderful Molly Shannon), and her life is disaster. All she wants to do is score some more painkillers and wash ’em down with booze.
Allison finally decides she has to go to a recovery meeting — and wouldn’t you know it, Daniel is there, because it turns out he’s an alcoholic with very some dark moments in his past as well. (We also know Daniel is a Vietnam veteran because he wears a hat saying, “Vietnam Veteran.”) Allison and Daniel strike up an unlikely friendship, which is a big enough dramatic swing — but that bond isn’t nearly as implausible as Allison becoming a kind of big sister to Ryan (Celeste O’Connor), the teenager whose parents were killed in that accident and who has been living under the care of her grandfather Daniel.
Not for one second do we believe it’s a good idea for Allison to hang out with Ryan to the point where they go clubbing in the city, with the film reaching its nadir in a scene when a gun-toting, intoxicated Daniel storms into the party where a college student is forcing himself on Ryan. (It’s like a melodramatic version of the party scene in “Uncle Buck,” only rendered with less finesse.)
We know we’re going to get the heartbreaking Relapse Scenes, followed by the hopeful Recovery Montages. We know some fences will be mended just in time, because after all, Allison is at heart a Good Person, as is Daniel. It’s just a painful slog every step of the way, made worse by the twee, indie-acoustic tunes on the soundtrack, and the writing that hammers home every point with the subtlety of an endless construction project going on in the apartment just above yours. Despite the fine performances, “A Good Person” starts off on the wrong foot and never finds a solid stride.
