in the land of soulless cliché

Rating: 1/10 (24 April 2007)

About as deep as a Hardy Boy book and as cogent as a McDonalds commercial. Where to really begin? The acting was second-rate and often times crossing the border to annoying. Smells like a giant music video scam for all us indie rock suckers..."oh I loved the music and wasn't the movie just darling." Never mind that the movie seemed to be a bunch of ideas from main actor/writer/director Braff's old college notebook written when he was most likely under the influence of his own ego tripping and stoned out of his gourd. He used these clever ideas in his notebook and pasted them together, added a little filler, and voilà a movie was born. Some of these ideas from his ganja-ridden notebook actually are funny and clever. It is the pasting together of these little "spots of time" where the movie turns sour. The movie becomes cliché, downright stupid, and so utterly predictable emotionally. When it isn't predictable emotionally it suffers from randomness for the sake of randomness (which isn't a talent). Too often mister director often seems to rest trite little indierocka film's foundation on such randomness. Ultra hip is what this is...but don't confuse being cool with being smart, cuz this little montage of crap is nothing but that. Think i'm gonna go unscrew a light bulb and cry in the dark now. The brat pack movies are better written and have more to say than this...hope it doesn't start a fad. Oh and the "near the end" scene where main characters get up on the caterpillar rig (or whatever it was) and yell and scream: god that was touching. And moving. Don't get caught up in the idea that this movie was brilliantly swirled in symbolism and metaphors and the like. It may have been. Just not brilliantly. But hey there was some good music in the movie, so I better give it 5 stars (the Shins are good, but if they are life changing then my whole review must be retracted and I will bow down naked to the indie rock god Zack Braff). Did anyone notice that what Braff seemed to be criticizing/commenting on is exactly what he created?