Whacky comedy that is strangely meaningful and relevant

Rating: 8/10 (5 January 2005)

Garden State is little short of a revelation. Screwball, mindless comedy has been successfully twinned with original and intelligent script writing.
Andrew Largeman has been in a lithium-induced haze since childhood. The heavy-duty antidepressants block out all emotions and leave him in a state where nothing bothers him very much. The opening sequences of the film are quite disorientating until we realise that we are seeing the world from Andrew's viewpoint. But then there is a series of events that involve Andrew travelling across states to his mother's funeral, a confrontation with his estranged father, and a chance meeting with a girl who is as zany as he is but in a totally different way. He decides to come off the lithium and experience life first hand.
The basic bad-taste elements of Garden State would barely lift it above the status of an average to good goofball comedy. There's Andrew's much talked-about minor screen role where he played a retarded kid more convincingly than a kid who is really retarded; a dog that tries to hump him and another dog that can masturbate itself; Andrew's old school mate has become a cop and practices being convincing at it when screaming at motorists, and Andrew's girlfriend will invent a random noise to convince herself of her originality. But the movie's real strength is not just that these gags, which might not be to everyone's taste, are done surprisingly well. It's almost as if Garden State manages to reach us on levels we had forgotten were important. When Andrew (who doesn't like making time for his ungracious dad) goes to his mother's funeral, his father quips about how he managed to 'fit it in' and about how it's important to 'find time to say goodbye.' But the irony is that it is Andrew, screwed up as he is, who manages to really say goodbye to the past. Not only that, his sincerity reaches through the professional wall that his psychiatrist father has erected and helps the old man also come to terms with the past.
Natalie Portman (as Sam) is equally dramatic in the unexpected impact her character has on us. She is a compulsive liar and not overly bright but, like Andrew, she comes to an acceptance of herself that is more truthful and revealing than the more successful characters in the film. While the visual jokes are standard off the wall - and quite good in that sort of way - the dialogue is scintillating and touches us on a much deeper level. There is a pathos in that these two characters, who have few qualities and little successes to write home about, manage to reach a harmony with life that we find not only intellectually satisfying but that most of us would perhaps want to strive to emulate. Suddenly the camel trying to pass through the eye of a needle refers not just to a material achievement that can blind us but to the mental and emotional garbage we carry around in our carefully constructed personas. Andrew, experiencing ordinary life as if from out of an emotional black hole, manages to analyse his situation simply and intelligently, unencumbered by the baggage that most of us have built up by the time we have reached his age. The effect is humbling.