A film called French girl starring Zach Braff apparently hit theaters in March. I say apparently because I’d never heard of the film, there’s no Wikipedia page for it, and no box office information is available. However, it’s currently free to watch on Prime Video. If you love Braff or Vanessa Hudgens, it’s still honestly not a very good waste of time.

I like Zach Braff, and Scrubs remains my absolute favorite comedy. I don’t even begrudge him blocking us on social media after I criticized his Kickstarter idea over a decade ago (if I were famous, I would block critics too). In French girlBraff is at his braffiest, which is both amusing and embarrassing.

The thing with French girl is that it feels like a romantic comedy that has been sitting on the shelf for twenty years. Somehow, the characters played by Zach Braff, Vanessa Hudgens and the rest of the cast have also aged two decades while the film has been gathering dust. It is basically a more pleasant Meet the parentsonly the fiancée’s parents are French-Canadian and the ex-boyfriend is an ex-girlfriend. To the film’s credit, it takes this aspect entirely seriously, which is the only surprising thing about a film that feels like it’s from 2004.

The premise is this: Braff plays Gordon, a high school teacher in Brooklyn. He is in love with his girlfriend Sophie (Evelyne Brochu), a chef who is being considered for a management position at the restaurant of her now famous ex-girlfriend Ruby (Hudgens). The interview/audition lasts several days, so Sophie takes Gordon to visit her family, who raise lambs outside Quebec City.

In typical sitcom fashion, Gordon does everything wrong from the start. He mixes the wrong pill with alcohol on the plane and returns to his parents completely drunk and confined to a wheelchair. The situation only gets worse: he makes a bad impression on his father (Luc Picard); his grandmother – who suffers from dementia – kisses him on the mouth, confusing him with her dead husband; and he embarrasses himself out of jealousy of Sophie’s ex Ruby.

For silly romantic comedies like this to work, the boyfriend—who is usually a dim-witted but lovable wreck—has to be a complete jerk at some point to generate the necessary tension. Being in a bad mood at big events or accusing your girlfriend of sleeping with her ex-girlfriend to get the job doesn’t go over well in 2024, even if a character is drunk. Consequently, the romance in the already-poor comedy falls apart entirely, despite William Fichtner’s scene-stealing performances as Gordon’s conspiracy-theorist father (Fichtner’s brief on-screen appearance is by far the best part of the film). It doesn’t help that the script feels like it was written for a couple considerably younger than Braff and Brochu.

It is not a good film and most of the comedy is more uncomfortable than funny, although the cast does its best to simulate a romantic comedy from 2004. Still, it is not a hard watch and is not entirely uncomfortable. It is comfortable and suitable for watching in the background while cooking dinner or folding laundry, but should definitely not demand your full attention.