I feel like I’ve seen a run of bad films lately. Going to the cinema has become a recipe for disappointment. Garden State is not a bad film — in fact, it’s damn good. But if I’m over-enthusiastic it’s probably because I’ve come from watching Hero and Bridget Jones 2, and was desperate for something interesting.

Garden State‘s strength is in its intriguing characters, which immediately separates it from the two films I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Andrew Largeman has been on Lithium since he was ten years old, and has finally come to the decision that there might not actually be anything wrong with him — sadly, he’s not seen his family for nine years, and this decision comes too late to share with his mother, who dies at the start of the film. Largeman returns from Los Angeles to attend the funeral, and finds contact with both old and new friends begins to reawaken him.

I’ve always wanted to like Natalie Portman, but over the last few years her turns in Star Wars I and II have made this a bit difficult. This film makes it easier again. Portman plays a quirky girl called Sam, who Andrew meets at the neurologist. I’m always a bit leery of American attempts at ‘quirky’ characters, as they so often end up simply stupid.[ftn] There are one or two moments where Sam looks in danger of falling into this trap, but some excellent dialogue and Portman’s acting save her from this.

Largeman’s grave digging/robbing friend Mark is perhaps a shade more interesting, via Peter Sarsgaard’s dangerous performance. There’s an underlying menace to a lot of his scenes, and yet there’s also a strong friendship shown between him and Andrew. I’m not quite sure how he managed this combination, but it goes a long way to making this film intriguing as well as funny. The other strong performance is Ian Holm’s quiet, understated Gideon Largeman. Holm pulls off an impressive American Jewish accent, and manages some dry humour and honest sadness — making a potentially unsympathetic role much more deep.

The film is written by, directed by, and stars Zach Braff of TV’s Scrubs, and he brings a lot of the crazy atmosphere of his show to this film. Of particular note is the near-perfect scene when Sam accompanies Largeman to a friend’s house after they meet. The first half of the film is packed with excellent, quirky jokes that are played with slow but perfect timing. As an actor, Zach does a good job of slowly emerging from his stupor, and achieves an endearing performance despite the strong alienation at the start. He even manages to make a few speeches that should have sounded awful play alright, due to his natural and compelling delivery.

There’s enough good things in the first half of the film to make you fall in love with it — which is lucky for the film, as the last half is occasionally quite painful. Garden State avoids most micro cliches, but runs headlong into a bunch of larger ones. I suppose you can see it coming from the premise, but Andrew’s journey out of his bland existence, and relationship with Sam, start to point you inevitably to two conclusions; either everything’s going to end up really happy, or someone’s going to die.[ftn] And while you’re desperately hoping something more interesting might happen, you lose a bit of faith every time one of the characters makes a long speech about life and death and what have you. Andrew’s first monologue, in the pool, is alright, but from there it’s down, down, down, and you’re almost expecting Aunt May to pop in and explain to everyone why we need heroes.

Ultimately this film is a shade disappointing, but I found it charming enough in the beginning to forgive its later sins. While there’s no denying Natalie Portman cries better than almost any other actor I’ve ever seen, I could have done with less of this — and Ian Holm deserved a more dynamic final scene than the passive one that he ends up with. Garden State may be corny, but it’s also interesting and funny. If you can stand a bit of cheese, you’ll like this movie — and if you don’t, just leave when it starts raining.

Footnotes

1. Dharma, for instance. Or any number of comic relief sidekicks in hollywood movies.
2. The Jackson Rule of try-hard cinema, so named after its discoverer.

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Wednesday, December 1st, 2004. It concerns such pressing issues as . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.