Review: Zach Braff's drama 'A Good Person' has moments of elegance and emotion, but also times where the phoniness takes over.

There’s been talk lately about whether AI programs could write a workable screenplay, given the right prompts — but I argue that it’s already happened, and someone typed the words “Zach Braff” and “addiction drama” into a computer, and the script for “A Good Person” popped out.

Braff wrote and directed this heavy drama — and if you’re at all familiar with his unfairly maligned 2004 comedy-drama “Garden State,” the movie that helped invent the “manic pixie dream girl,” you aren’t surprised by Braff’s name in the end credits here.

Florence Pugh stars as Allison, who first appears to be a prototypical “manic pixie dream girl.” She plays piano and sings, and she has cool New York friends, all of whom show up for her engagement party — to celebrate her impending marriage to the super-nice Nathan (Chinaza Uche). 

Then, as she’s driving with Nathan’s sister, Molly (Nichelle Hines), and Molly’s husband, Jesse (Toby Onwumere), she looks at the map on her phone for a second — and looks up to see a backhoe lurching out into traffic. The crash kills Molly and Jesse, and leaves Allison dealing with pain and guilt.

Move forward a year, and Allison isn’t the “dream girl” any more. She’s more like the depressed, screwed-up character Braff played in “Garden State.” She’s physically recovered from the car crash, but the emotional damage is still insurmountable — as is the opioid addiction she has developed from the pain pills she took after the accident. She’s living with her mom, Diane (Molly Shannon), and long since cut off her engagement to Nathan.

Realizing that she’s hit rock bottom, Allison works up the nerve to find and attend a meeting for addicts. As soon as she enters the room, though, she sees the last person she wants to see: Nathan and Molly’s father, Daniel (played by Morgan Freeman, who worked with Braff in 2017’s “Going in Style”). When Allison tries to run away, it’s Daniel — who has been sober 10 years, but keeps a bottle of whiskey hidden to test his resolve — who convinces her to stay. 

And, just like that, we’re in a drama about addiction, recovery and relapse. Braff, who can be a sensitive screenwriter, manages to steer clear of the clichés common to addiction-themed movies. Unfortunately, he steps into other traps, including the painfully earnest plot device of making Daniel a model-train hobbyist — and thus letting Freeman deliver an opening narration about “a world where the neighbors are always kind, the lovers always end up together, and the trains always take you to the far-off places you always swore you’d go.”

Though Braff’s story hits all the stations of the cross in Allison’s road to redemption, there are some bright spots. The standout is Celeste O’Connor (“Freaky”), playing Molly’s teen daughter Ryan, now living with Daniel and testing his revived parenting skills — as well as overcoming her resentment at Allison entering their life.

“A Good Person” veers between moments of genuine feeling and moments of phony schmaltz — and ends up delivering more of the fake stuff than the real thing. 

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‘A Good Person’

★★1/2

Opening Friday, March 24, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for drug abuse, language throughout and some sexual references. Running time: 129 minutes.