Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Alan Arkin, Ann-Margret, Joey King, Matt Dillon, John Ortiz, Christopher Lloyd

Zach Braff

Zach Braff must be desperate for work; it’s the only logical reason why he would agree to direct a remake of 1979’s “Going in Style,” a movie so unmemorable that most people have never even heard of it. It’s completely out of character for a filmmaker like Braff, whose first two features (“Garden State” and “Wish I Was Here”) were such deeply personal pieces of work that it’s very surprising to see him slumming it as a director-for-hire. Then again, he probably couldn’t resist the opportunity to work alongside three Hollywood legends, and it’s hard to blame him, because the casting of Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin is pretty much the only thing that this movie has going for it.

The actors play a trio of lifelong friends and former co-workers who have just been informed that their pension fund at the local steel factory is being dissolved, leaving the already financially-strapped retirees in a tough spot. Without a pension to pay his mortgage, Joe (Caine) is at risk of losing the home that he shares with his daughter and grandchild to bank foreclosure, and Willie (Freeman) is in desperate need of a kidney transplant that his insurance won’t cover. The curmudgeonly Albert (Arkin), meanwhile, has practically given up on life already, despite the romantic advances of peppy supermarket clerk Annie (Ann-Margaret). But when Joe witnesses a bank robbery in progress and gets the idea to pull a heist of his own, he convinces Willie and Albert to help him rob the bank that’s responsible for screwing them over.

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Zach Braff, Kate Hudson, Joey King, Pierce Gargnon, Mandy Patinkin, Josh Gad, Ashley Greene, Jim Parsons

Zach Braff

Hating Zach Braff was in fashion long before the actor/director launched a Kickstarter campaign for his long-awaited sophomore effort, but the way he went about funding his follow-up to 2004’s “Garden State” really got under some people’s skin. (Oddly enough, Rob Thomas’ “Veronica Mars” movie received infinitely less criticism despite starting the whole fad.) But while Braff may have been unfairly judged for the way he raised the money to make the film, it’s a wonder why he had to resort to crowdsourcing at all, because “Wish I Was Here” is a confident, funny and heartfelt tragicomedy that, although not without its blemishes, proves Braff is more than just a one-hit wonder.

Braff plays Aidan Bloom, a struggling actor whose wife Sarah (Kate Hudson) is the sole breadwinner of the family, supporting him and their two children (Joey King and Pierce Gagnon) with her drab, government job while he’s off pursuing his dream. But when his father (Mandy Pantinkin) is no longer able to pay the children’s private school tuition because he needs the money for an experimental cancer treatment, Aidan agrees to homeschool the kids rather than place them in the city’s awful public school system. The problem is that Aidan isn’t exactly fit to be a teacher (hence the grammatical error in the film’s title), so instead, he takes them on a series of “field trips” meant to impart life lessons that help him rediscover his own identity in the process.

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