Garden without flowers

Rating: 4/10 (25 April 2005)

Inept, silly and shallow drama concerning the problems of a young man to fit among his family and his birthplace, after a long time of absence. Among many other problems 'Garden State' never decides along the way if the vision of the main theme would be a comic and sarcastic view or a serious, thoughtful way to tell the problems of the main character with his father, his deceased mother and his weird old friends. The overcome is a far fetched story that never hits the point and give to the audience - the intelligent audience, it must be said - the impression of a complete misfire. Maybe 'Garden State' could have been a solid story about personal discovery and at the same time a journey to find, at last, peace and self satisfaction. That would be nice; but with the bad dialogs, the weird situations, the ludicrous performances, 'Garden State' is a failed and extremely unsatisfactory experience. I think that 'Garden State' is a movie made for teenagers audience. No prejudice in this sentence. Just a fact of life: during our lives we have different moments of thought, considerations and needs. When we are teenagers we always think that the world is unbalanced and stupid (and maybe, in a sense, that's true). But we must grow up. And when it happens, our language, our senses of the world are changed, and we are not anymore fascinated by odd behaviors or hollow kind of protests. 'Garden State' is a movie made with this sense of spirit. So, if you're not a teenager anymore (or an adult with teenager's vision of life), this movie would be just a tiresome and forgettable entry.