Mildly engaging, but this definitely could have been better

Rating: 5/10 (13 February 2017)

Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) returns to his hometown in order to attend his mother's funeral. Because he is an actor, many of Andrew's friends see him as a 'big shot' and upon his return home Andrew is treated as a bit of a celebrity. However, Andrew is a troubled man with a troubling past who strikes up a friendship (and eventually) a relationship with Sam (Natalie Portman) a young woman with troubles of her own.
It's clear from this film that Braff is setting up a narrative that brings together two seemingly different people who aren't actually all that different. It isn't an entirely original concept, but it's one that can really pull at the heartstrings if it's executed correctly. Unfortunately, Garden State gets some things right and some things wrong...
One issue I had with this film is that I never really felt that Braff offered much development to any of his characters; his friends just seemed to be a rather clichéd bunch of frat-boy doofuses which actually made the first 20 minutes or so of the picture to be a particularly painful experience. Sam is an interesting character and I really hoped that more would have been made out of her being a compulsive liar - perhaps a bit of character depth or complexity to explain away her reasons for choosing to lie. Instead of this, you end up with Sam mentioning now and again that she's a compulsive liar and then her mentioning that she doesn't know why she lies, but that's all you get. There's little insight or depth to the picture which at times makes it hard to care what's happening. I could argue the same point with Andrew; a big deal is made about his past and his reasons for disappearing, but again all these details are skimmed over rather than being analysed deeper and I couldn't help but feel that the narrative was a tad simplistic at times. There is some animosity between Largeman and his father which could have been interesting, but is barely given any focus at all resulting in their exchanges having very little bearing on the picture.
The one thing running in this film's favour are that both Andrew and Sam are likable and despite the narrative and character weaknesses I did actually find their blossoming relationship believable and kind of endearing. Natalie Portman is another selling point for this film giving a wonderfully quirky and edgy performance - it's a pity really that she didn't have more of a character to work with. Braff is OK, but is no match for Portman and I think he knows it. Sarsgaard is energetic, but his character is annoying and never really feels important to the story. Holm is in this film, but isn't really given anything to do.
Garden State has its moments and both Braff and Portman are likable enough and share good chemistry and yes I did find their romance believable and engaging. However, when all is said and done, I just never felt that this film was firing on all four cylinders consistently enough and I found many of the characters to be underdeveloped, underwritten and therefore, both they, and the story, were never as interesting as they could have been. As I said in my summary, it is mildly engaging, but not much more than that.