Garden State Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)August 21st, 2004
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I'm starting to get sick of the "coming home" motif in both film and television, but Scrubs' Zach Braff does it up right in Garden State, his surprisingly assured debut as a writer and director. In State, Braff plays 26-year-old Andrew Largeman, a disconnected waiter at a Vietnamese restaurant in Los Angeles who returns home to New Jersey for his mother's funeral. Andrew, a struggling actor who has been heavily medicated since childhood thanks to his shrink father (Ian Holm), hasn't been home in nine years and initially has trouble connecting with his old pals, whether they' ve become millionaires or they make ends meet by robbing the dead.
Hardly sounds like a comedy, eh? It gets worse when Andrew meets and falls for an epileptic compulsive liar (Natalie Portman) with a hamster-obsessed mother and a brother right from the pages of a Sally Struthers commercial. You want laughs? Wait until you find out how Andrew's mom died. You'll laugh yourself right over the edge of a cliff.
On paper, State might sound like a train wreck, but Braff manages to keep the dark content surprisingly light (but not, like, Danny Deckchair light) thanks to a full slate of likable yet extremely flawed characters, a slew of smart sight gags (including the funniest medical waiting room scene since Lost in Translation) and an even smarter soundtrack. The acting is all quite solid, and it's refreshing to see Boys Don't Cry's Peter Sarsgaard play grimy again after cleaning himself up for Shattered Glass.
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