Zach Braff isn’t known for his good grammar, and he’s getting lots of heat from academic types who have accused him of killing the subjunctive mood in the title of his new film Wish I Was Here. They think Braff has committed a huge grammatical faux pas and can’t see the film for lack of getting past its title.

Zach defended his choice in an interview with Vulture.

“The whole film is about a dad who’s not an academic trying to teach his kids, and his kids know more than he does,” Zach Braff said. “His daughter is constantly correcting him when he says who instead of whom; and so the title, although it has another meaning, we grammatically did it incorrect on purpose, because it’s about a father who is actually learning from his children who are brighter than he is.”

Wish I Was Here stars Kate Hudson, Mandy Patinkin, Ashley Greene, and Josh Gad in addition to Zach Braff. Zach and brother Adam Braff co-wrote the screenplay.

Yahoo points out that as he defends his title to Vulture, he even uses the word ‘incorrect’ incorrectly. It should actually have been ‘incorrectly’ in the context he used.

This isn’t the first time Zach Braff has had to defend the title of his film. He said the following during an interview with Empire.com.

“Wish I Was Here sounds cooler than Wish I Were Here. Then the movie’s about a father who’s trying to teach his kids at home despite not being much of an academic himself. So it works in two ways, really, but yeah, I take your point,” he said when called out by his interviewer.

All of these grammatically incorrect statements made the Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri’s skin crawl.

“Listen, buddy,” she wrote–addressing Zach Braff. “You like yourself some wistful counterfactuals, do you? Well, let’s get one thing straight. There are two ways to express a counterfactual wish. One way is with the subjunctive. The other way is wrong.”

People have even taken to Twitter to bash Zach Braff.

.@zachbraff why do you hate the subjunctive?

— Amy McConnell (@butteresq) July 18, 2014

Creating a Kickstarter to teach Zach Braff about the subjunctive.

— 2 Stressed 2 B Wrest (@heyitsurban) July 11, 2014

@sdterp *sigh* This movie name drives me batty (er). I wish Zach Braff were more knowledgeable about the subjunctive. http://t.co/ED1a6sGbyA

— brenna1009 (@brenna1009) June 30, 2014

Okay, so Zach Braff likely gets it. Still he doesn’t seem to care. What he does care about is whether or not people are going to see Wish I Was Here.

How wide we expand next weekend depends on these cities this weekend. So please go and tell your peeps to go. X, Z pic.twitter.com/ueVw0tXVMX

— Zach Braff (@zachbraff) July 19, 2014

So far it sounds like it’s battling–based on box office sales–to get a full nationwide run in theaters.

Is Zach Braff’s film Wish I Was Here on your go-see list?

Image via Wikimedia Commons