For the Under 25 Crowd Only (or those with stunted emotional maturity)

Rating: 3/10 (20 February 2005)

I'm 43 years old. "Garden State" was excruciating for me to watch. I found the thing narcissistic, overbearingly precious, stilted, pretentious, unrealistic, and worst of all--dull. But I will concede that I would probably have viewed this "Graduate" rip off a bit more favorably back when I was in my twenties. That was back when I was a dumbass who thought the world revolved around me (and also back when "screaming into the abyss" would have seemed "cool" instead of just a sophomorically obvious attempt at metaphor). Writer/Director Zach Braff might--just "might"--have been able to pull off something less cloying, obvious, immature, and vomitously faux intellectual if he had turned the directorial reigns over to someone else. The script has some good moments, but they are far outweighed by the monstrous love Braff's camera has for his own blank face and the equally blind love he has for his own often-stilted and pretentious dialogue. An experience filmmaker would have known how to trim away the self-love and nonsense and made a real movie out of this mess.