Very Deep and Very Funny

Rating: 8/10 (24 May 2005)

This is a movie that makes a good try at being "deep meaning" with a little humor thrown in but falls short. Zach Braff plays a displaced New Jersey young man who has moved to California and when he is not playing part-time actor he is wearing "Charlie Chan" make-up in a pretentious Vietnamese restaurant.
Zach gets a call from his father to return home to New Jersey because his mother has drowned in a bathtub accident. The dreamy, kind of insensitive Zach feels it is his duty to go. He kind of day dreams through the ceremony at the cemetery and then goes out partying with heavy drugs with his friends.
Zach complains to his father about sharp headaches and his father sends him to a neurologist to get checked out. While there, two significant things happen. First he meets Natalie Portman who is kind of spaced out herself and then he learns that his problems are probably related to the drugs his psychiatrist father has been proscribing for him.
Zach happens on Natalie later on and the two start hanging out together. There relationship slowly blooms and as there relationship improves they both realize that they are not really losers. Zach's problems relate to both the drugs he was taking and the guilt he had been carrying from a childhood incident involving his mother.
The movie has some really hilarious parts and I understand that Zach was the actual writer/director. Not a lot of action but an enjoyable and very different type of movie.