Garden State

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 2011)

I personally liked the movie Garden State. The movie presents the lives of many people living in this world today. Andrew Largeman, the hero of Garden State is almost catatonic when first we see him (Roger Ebert); the movie starts with a twenty six year old man lying down on his empty room when he hears from his father that his mother has passed away after drowning in the bathtub. After this incident, Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) goes to his mother's funeral and the next day meets a really nice girl named Sam (Natalie Portman) which he falls in love with.
I am not a fanatic of movies, but this movie presents a story that could be happening right now to many other people. What I like about this movie is that it has both, its comic parts and its dramatic parts. This is a nice story that many people would want to be living after this same incident, having a mother die. After the mothers death, none of Andrews friends mind on how he feels, they just tell him that they should go partying. The movie presents the girl as the hero of Andrew. When Andrew meets Natalie Portman the day after the funeral, she is the only person who treats him with any curiosity, though because of his passivity, still does a lot of hilarious projecting based on her own insecurities. (Adam Lippe) The father is really upset at Andrew for leaving his mother paralyzed from the waist down after pushing her and making her fall on the door of the dish washer. At first Andrew is presented as a kind of drug addict and lonely man. After meeting Sam, Andrew starts to change, he seems to be happier and for the first time he starts to fall in love with a girl.
The thing I least liked about this movie is that it is always the same story, a guy finds a girl, the girl changes his life and they end up being falling in love. Even though the story makes it a good movie, the story was predictable. As soon as I saw Andrew and Sam meeting in the hospital, I knew she would help him overcome the tragedy and they would both end up falling in love. The ending was very predictable because as soon as we see that Andrew just gives the girl a kiss and leaves, this makes us predict that he will come back. This makes the movie a little bit imperfect because a movie is supposed to keep you thinking on what the end is going to be, this forces to keep watching the movie until you get to the end.
Mark (Peter Sasgaard) is a high school buddy of Andrew, who works on burying dead people. At Andrews's mom funeral, he finds his friend Mark and they started chatting, at the end of the day they go to a party and start doing drugs and playing spin the bottle. The last day Andrew is supposed to be in town is very significant. At first, all the wondering around in the store with Mark and Sam, going to the couple that lived in a boat and the kiss on top of the machine has no sense. This makes no connection to the story at first, but ends up being very significant to Andrew after his friend Mark gives him his mom's favorite necklace.
Overall, this movie had its ups and downs. The movie portrays a really nice story that many people would want to be living after having a family member pass away. Having the ending almost predicted could be named as one negative thing for this movie, but in the overall it is good entertaining movie.