a brilliant and refreshing film for our generation

Rating: Null/10 (11 June 2004)

I knew nothing about this film until I attended the screening at UCLA, and I am very glad I did, because I was able to experience the creativity of Zach Braff.
Garden State was refreshing, brilliant, and strikes a chord with the "20-something" generation. A good chord.
The first scene does a good job at presenting us with the state of mind that the character Andrew Largeman "Large" has been in for the past several years as a 20-something year old...who has been taking his psychologist father's prescribed medication since the age of 10. He wakes up to a living "coma", with a not-so-good life. He leaves LA to go finally go back home to New Jersey for his mother's funeral after years of alienation from his family. It is here that he stops taking his medication, and we see how "Large" sees life with a little bit less sarcasm as the medicated drugs clear from his system.
It's very humorous and genuine to watch the first encounter with Natalie Portman's character Sam. It is so offbeat and random, but you just can't help but enjoy watching her performance, as the gist of the movie has its own weird random moments. The interesting vignettes really bring an insight to how everything else is seen through the eyes of Large.
Braff does a brilliant job with the dialogue, delivering a sarcastic numbness with witty humor. It's just very impressive that he wrote and directed this film. I could not stop thinking about how well the script was written. With such wit and such warmth, this movie cannot be categorized as just a comedy or as just a drama. Garden State touches upon different categories and it touches upon the worries of everyday life that people of this generation embrace.
With a very low budget and 25 days of filming this movie, the sum of the parts are much greater than the whole, if not more. Braff's down-to-earth script, the great soundtrack, and the exceptional acting from the supporting cast puts this movie at the top of my list along with Eternal Sunshine.