Wonderful acting and soundtrack make up for slightly shaky direction.

Rating: 8/10 (11 September 2006)

'Garden State' is a simple movie about a young, mentally and emotionally unstable man returning to his home in New Jersey for his mother's funeral, and finds love during his visit.
Garden State is quite a good movie. On the surface it is a simple story, but as most movies like this are, it is deeper then that.
One of the problems it has is it's direction. The plots and sub plots are shaky. The movie is short, and I was not exactly sure where the plot was going until the end, where most of the material seemed to quickly explained. Then again, maybe that is intentional sense it left me thinking when it was over.
However, that is made up for by the wonderful acting, particularly by Natalie Portman and Peter Sarsgaard.
The soundtrack is also awesome. Simple, great music that help to illustrate the emotions at hand perfectly.
If you are looking for a simple, relatively light movie and are open to some directional flaws by first timer Zach Braff, looking for some great acting, and maybe even some songs to add to your MP3 player or ipod, then Garden State is your match.
8/10.