wisneskilife What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall for the writing and filming of Garden State. Zach Braff is a creative genius who wrote and directed this masterpiece. Something about laughing through genuine human sadness makes you feel better. Natalie Portman and Braff made for an idyllic couple and I loved imagining all the possibilities of future stories after the ending.

sexwizardmoustache In one word, I would describe this movie as boring. I could not wait for it to end and kept checking how many minutes were remaining. I don't think a good movie is supposed to make you do that. Basically, the characters are shallow, one dimensional, incredibly boring, walking clichés. From the try-hard, self- absorbed, pill-popping emo main character, to the supporting characters who are uninteresting losers belonging in a trailer park and the love interest who is trying so hard to be individualistic and original, she is basically cramming it down your throat. In case you didn't get the message she wants to be super original, she tells you she likes to make random noises and movements that no one has ever done before so she can go down in history as being the only person on the planet to do said random movement and noise. And this is supposed to be so endearing that main character emo goes from feeling nothing to falling for her and changing his whole life in the space of 2 days. Somebody get me a bucket. If you want to watch a character who is actually individualistic and original, watch Amelie (note she doesn't tell you at any point in that movie that she is trying to be individualistic or original). This movie is supposedly a statement about my generation. If that's really the case then I guess I'm supposed to yell out into an "infinite abyss" and tell someone I'm breaking up with that this isn't a period, it's an ellipsis and then throw up a bit in my mouth. That airport scene where she was sobbing in the payphone booth and he comes back for her was so cheesy, it literally made me gag. This is not some big love. We watched two uninteresting, unlikeable characters we don't care about get to know each other for 2 days. There was no profound love story that warrants such a sappy conclusion. It's ironic that a movie trying to be so indie ends up concluding like a cliché romcom, some guy chasing girl at airport and declaring his love to her. Pretty sure 99% of romcoms end this way and at least the script writers in those movies put in a bit more effort to write a story with a beginning, middle and end. In summary, there is no character development, and the plot is basically some guy returning to his home town after 9 years and apparently everyone treats him as if he never left and they are the best of friends, even though when he left, they were all teenagers. His friends are losers and they all hang around doing boring, loser things, and then love interest tags along to also do boring, loser things. The emo was on medication but he doesn't want to be anymore, because he wants to feel stuff now that he has met original individualistic love interest. The whole plot centres on him accidentally paralysing his mother as a kid and his father having him on mind altering medication since. Considering this was the whole story, they probably should have spent more than 30 seconds on it in total (there's literally 15 seconds screen time with the father all up, and another 15 seconds of him telling the story of his past). If the whole premise is based on this, then Braff really should have fleshed it out a bit more, instead of just having all the characters hanging around doing boring, loser things for the other 101.5 minutes of the movie. The end result is we aren't given the opportunity to care about the main character's past, his present or whether things work out for him in the future and we are bored out of our minds for the majority of the movie wondering why we aren't doing something more interesting with our time. Even with a better plot (or the existence of a plot) the characters really need to be far more interesting for this movie to be even remotely watchable. Why this is so well rated, even by critics will go down in history as one of life's great, unsolvable mysteries.

jimbo-53-186511 Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) returns to his hometown in order to attend his mother's funeral. Because he is an actor, many of Andrew's friends see him as a 'big shot' and upon his return home Andrew is treated as a bit of a celebrity. However, Andrew is a troubled man with a troubling past who strikes up a friendship (and eventually) a relationship with Sam (Natalie Portman) a young woman with troubles of her own.It's clear from this film that Braff is setting up a narrative that brings together two seemingly different people who aren't actually all that different. It isn't an entirely original concept, but it's one that can really pull at the heartstrings if it's executed correctly. Unfortunately, Garden State gets some things right and some things wrong...One issue I had with this film is that I never really felt that Braff offered much development to any of his characters; his friends just seemed to be a rather clichéd bunch of frat-boy doofuses which actually made the first 20 minutes or so of the picture to be a particularly painful experience. Sam is an interesting character and I really hoped that more would have been made out of her being a compulsive liar - perhaps a bit of character depth or complexity to explain away her reasons for choosing to lie. Instead of this, you end up with Sam mentioning now and again that she's a compulsive liar and then her mentioning that she doesn't know why she lies, but that's all you get. There's little insight or depth to the picture which at times makes it hard to care what's happening. I could argue the same point with Andrew; a big deal is made about his past and his reasons for disappearing, but again all these details are skimmed over rather than being analysed deeper and I couldn't help but feel that the narrative was a tad simplistic at times. There is some animosity between Largeman and his father which could have been interesting, but is barely given any focus at all resulting in their exchanges having very little bearing on the picture.The one thing running in this film's favour are that both Andrew and Sam are likable and despite the narrative and character weaknesses I did actually find their blossoming relationship believable and kind of endearing. Natalie Portman is another selling point for this film giving a wonderfully quirky and edgy performance - it's a pity really that she didn't have more of a character to work with. Braff is OK, but is no match for Portman and I think he knows it. Sarsgaard is energetic, but his character is annoying and never really feels important to the story. Holm is in this film, but isn't really given anything to do.Garden State has its moments and both Braff and Portman are likable enough and share good chemistry and yes I did find their romance believable and engaging. However, when all is said and done, I just never felt that this film was firing on all four cylinders consistently enough and I found many of the characters to be underdeveloped, underwritten and therefore, both they, and the story, were never as interesting as they could have been. As I said in my summary, it is mildly engaging, but not much more than that.

Thomas Drufke When I think of coming of age movies of the last decade, there are several movies that come to mind, and quite possibly Garden State will be in that list. The film does a good job at capturing the time in your life when you are in between school and the real life and still trying to figure out your priorities in life. I really like how Zach Braff directed and wrote this movie. Even though it feels like a lot of other self discovery films, he brought something new to the table.Having Natalie Portman as the lead female is also never a bad choice. Portman is one of the few actresses that bring a tremendous amount of realism to her characters. And she may very well have the best crying face in Hollywood. Her quirky Sam character perfectly complimented Braff's Andrew. Their chemistry is apparent right from the first scene together all the way to the last airport scene. Although I think the ending was one of the few major weak points the movie had. I was also a bit confused on the whole day-dreaming sequence up until the final scene when it started to come together.Peter Sarsgaard was also a good fit with the cast. I'm glad that he didn't turn into just another druggie, and actually had depth to his character. The father felt rather flat to me, and even in the bedroom scene, I didn't feel much compassion for the man. But the real gems are the scenes just between Sam and Andrew. I think for that reason alone is why this film is constantly on top movies of the 2000's lists. What I really enjoyed about this movie, is that it's basically genre-less. It's not a true romance, comedy, drama or adventure. It's simply a pretty good movie about life.+Chemistry between Braff & Portman +No genre +Relatable life situations-Ending falls flat -One note dad character 7.7/10