Garden State (2004)

Starring: Zach Braff, Ian Holm, Peter Sarsgaard, Natalie Portman, Armando Riesco, Trisha LaFache

First, the Lowdown: A young man who doesn’t emote finds himself thrust into emotion.

Andrew doesn’t feel much – a nightmare of a crashing plane doesn’t faze him. He wakes to a perfectly blank bedroom that matches his blank expression. When his father calls to tell him that his mother has died, Andrew doesn’t respond. In his bathroom cabinet is an array of prescription drugs that would make Keith Moon envious, and he touches none of them.

Flying home to Jersey from L.A., Andrew still doesn’t know what to do at his mother’s funeral. At the graveyard he runs into two old high school friends who invite him to a party later on. Andrew isn’t sure how to react, but at his mother’s memorial service, he realizes that he has to interact with his father and his extended family, which only convinces him that he needs to see his relatives as little as possible.

At the party, however, Andrew is even more disconnected, but this time he is in company he chooses to be with. The more time he spends reconnecting with old classmates and friends; Andrew gradually begins to allow himself to emote. But like a hidden prodigy he feels sheepish at expressing any emotion, even if it harms no one.

Because Andrew has been suddenly plagued by migraines, he goes to a neurologist and there he meets Sam. Where Andrew is reserved, Sam is frenetic – her conversation is hyperactive and scattershot, and frequently blurs the barrier of truth and falsehood so ably that we oftentimes don’t know when she’s being honest with Andrew. Andrew finds himself drawn toward her as she starts to embody the expressiveness that he craves.

When I found out that Zach Braff was going to be directing a movie, I was pretty skeptical. Braff’s performance in the series “Scrubs” has made him the heir to David Schwimmer’s throne on television. So much like Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine On The Spotless Mind I was thankful to find out that Braff is also capable of being understated. As a character Andrew doesn’t know how to act and often finds himself surprised by the actions he takes – so it’s good to see that Braff is equally capable of being just as reserved.

Braff’s skill as a director, however, can be summed up by a single image: Andrew exits his car after parking and sees a dismembered gas spigot still sticking into the tank as a result of forgetting to replace it at the station. There are many ideas that are left kind of unformed, almost as if Braff forgot to get back to them later on. Also at times it feels like he’s trying TOO hard to make the movie “quirky”. (For the prominence of the character of Sam, not much is really known about her.) Even more vexing is the presence of a couple of deleted scenes on the DVD release that would’ve been appropriate in the movie itself, but were left out almost as if Braff feared he was showing off. Then again, it is his first movie at the helm – hopefully he’s making these kind of errors early on to learn from them.

Line of the movie: “It's amazing how much of my life has been determined by a quarter inch piece of plastic.”

Four stars. Remember your sedatives.