My take on Garden State

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 2011)

Garden State is a fairly good dramedy that your girlfriend forces on you to watch with her on those lazy Sundays. Zach Braff plays a numb twenty something year old waiter/actor that goes back home, after nine years of not having any contact with any of his friends and family, for his mother's funeral. The movie was fairly predictable, the typical coming of age story, where the main character has to find him-self to change his life. The film brings you in with weird humor by Natalie Portman as Sam and by the character growth that Zach Braff as Andrew Largeman experiences. A fairly weird but intriguing love story, which I enjoyed because of its unexpected moments and character development. Zach or "Large" is a young struggling actor in California who is emotionally disconnected from the world, due to a tragic event in his childhood. He's emotionless for the better part of the movie, even after parties and some drug use he still seems to be out in his own world. Just like in this sitcom show "Scrubs". Where he looks to the side and has a strange fantasy of some sort before coming back to the real world. Andrew being so emotionless through the scene were you see a reckless group of old high school friends together using drugs and playing sexual games amongst them, drew me into the movie more and more. I wanted to know why this guy is acting so weird. Why he's delaying to talk to his dad? What is he avoiding? Then the plot of the movie gets even weirder when "Sam" (Natalie Portman), a compulsive liar, comes into the movie, but with her she brings life into the film, making it more enjoyable to watch. All these questions are brought up so early in the film, that it makes you eager to find out all the answers.
Sam is beautiful, unpredictable, spontaneous and original. She catches Large's eye immediately at a doctor's office. They spend all this time back home together and the more they are together the more alive the movie and Large seem to get. Ann Hornaday talks about this in her critic "Large begins to wake up, and the few days he spends with her". I like how their difference's in characters allows them to be perfectly them self's with each other, creating that bond, that he will have to fight for and grow up from boy to man in order to keep. Even with Sam's randomness the movie drags from time to time, showing unnecessary dialog that's not geared to the transformation of Andrew Largeman character.
The most important part or turning point, is when Andrew shares the reason of his usage of prescription drugs by him explaining the cause of his mother's paraplegic sate made the film not only come together but showed the emotion that I had been waiting for this whole time. It was refreshing and made the movie interesting to me because it gave me hope like for the rest of the movie and I wasn't disappointed. Andrew had presence and weight as a character from this point on in the movie.
In my opinion, the most interesting plot of this movie was brought in by Andrew's grave robbing friend "Mark". He takes Andrew and Sam all over town on a hunt for a farewell present for Andrew. Most of the comical relief and character growth is done in this part of the film. Not only do Andrew and Sam grow, but also Mark has a change in his personality. Andrew is taken to this underworld of crime, the most bizarre places imaginable in this little town of Jersey. "As an audience, we're interested in what outlandish character might emerge in the next scene" writes Muller and that's exactly how I felt. After all the running around they end up in this boat or home of some sort that is located in a huge hole where a mall was going to be built. That's where Mark finally gets his gift for Andrew. In that same place is when Andrew showed all his frustration and emotion and lets it go by yelling in to the abyss of the hole. By the end of the movie I was all in. the characters grew on me and the plot that wasn't so strong in the beginning but it grew and came together. Andrew got his gift which was his mother's necklace. The ending was very predictable to me, I knew he was going to come back and stay with Sam she made him feel and for him that was very important, so it was nice to see that he cared for her as much as she did for him and that they felt that they needed each other to be happy because they could be themselves.