Awful, terrible, earnest

Rating: Null/10 (8 October 2004)

I saw Garden State at the Bridge last night. Though it steals an entire playbook from Wes Anderson, the first hour is quite watchable and has some genuinely funny scenes. As Zach Braff emerges from a lifelong Prozac- and Zoloft-induced haze, he is surrounded by the same quirky characters and nodding displays of Americana that have delighted knowing hipster kids for more than a decade now.
But Braff's shaking off the drugs turns out to be a metaphor for him shaking off all that hipster irony, for trying to figure out what is really important in life. Unfortunately, this is also where I shook off any interest in the film. As it entered its second, 'earnest' half, I experienced so many "People don't talk that way"-moments that I wished Braff would get back on the drugs.
You can only pity poor Natalie "I like sand" Portman, who gets to add some real gems to her portfolio:
"I know it hurts. But it's life, and it's real. And sometimes it f***ing hurts, but it's life, and it's pretty much all we've got."
However, my favorite had to be Braff's:
Braff: Have fun searching the infinite abyss. Boat guy: You too.
The accompanying symbolism is just as heavy-handed as the dialog. For example, the film goes way out of it's way to let you know that this infinite abyss is scheduled to be paved over for a shopping mall. See, it's like, he's digging down through the facade of modern suburban life to get at what's really real, you know? That's deep, man.
I know 4 out of 5 twenty-something disaffectoids recommend Garden State to moviegoers tying to wean themselves off irony. But please, this is not The Graduate for a new generation. It's not even as good as Lost in Translation (to which it is inexplicably compared). I'll give it an 'E' for effort, but Garden State simply underscores the fact that the post-irony school is still trying to figure out how to infuse the new earnestness with intelligence and subtlety.