Milkduds

Garden State (9/10)

January 17th, 2005

Watched Garden State Friday night, and I was pretty impressed. It was Zach Braff’s (from the tv show, Scrubs) first major motion picture to write, direct, and star in. And for it to be this good, I will be expecting great things from him in the future. Just from watching him on Scrubs, which I think is hilarious, I would never have expected him to be so artistic because of his quirky comedic style. The movie is basically about a young, depressed actor, Andrew Largeman, that comes home for his mother’s funeral after being away for 9 years. He expects to leave soon, but meets a girl (Natalie Portman) that changes his mind.

The acting in this movie is superb and so is the writing. Peter Sarsgaard played one of Andrew’s old friends and delivered an outstanding performance, yet again. Ian Holm plays Andrew’s father, but didn’t get that much screen time. There’s a delete scene on the DVD between the two that is very good, so look for that. There is a lot of “that was deep, man” dialogue in the script, and that sometimes made the movie cheesy, but overall very good and meaningful. And the reason for all of that is because Andrew is coming to grips with his mother’s death and the fact that he hasn’t needed to be on antidepressants for the last 9 years. The pace of the plot is steady and wraps up very nicely at the end. And it wasn’t over 2 hours long! Yea!

Entry Filed under: Movies