Garden State

157. Garden State

Garden State is the directorial debut for Zach Braff, best known for his work on Scrubs.

Braff pulls triple duty here. He wrote, directed and starred. He plays Andrew Largeman, a failed actor who is currently waiting tables in between acting gigs. He's aimlessly meandering through life when he gets a phone call from his estranged father, telling him that his mother has passed away. He returns to New Jersey for the funeral and to catch up with the friends he'd left behind.

I like this movie a lot. Ordinarily, I'm not a big fan of drama but this one just works really well. When I saw it for the first time, I related to a lot of the issues Largeman was going through. Just a general malaise about the direction life was going in and an uncertainty regarding the future. Upon re-watching it now, I related to an entirely different set of his problems. Having just lost my mom earlier this year, I related to the feelings he was going through. He's homesick for a place that is no longer home. Over the course of the years, I'd occasionally been homesick for my mom's apartment. Upon returning there to help clean it up a few months ago, I realized that it wasn't so much a feeling of genuine homesickness. It was just nostalgia for a simpler time. The apartment no longer felt like home to me. It essentially became just another place. I drive by it now and barely have any feelings. But I digress...

The performances here make the movie. Braff is a highlight, for sure. Peter Sarsgaard and Natalie Portman also shine. Support comes from Ian Holm, Jean Smart, and Armando Riesco. Method Man and Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory have roles that essentially work out to cameos.

Overall, Garden State is an excellent movie. I highly recommend it.