Garden State (2004)
Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) is a man on so much medication that all he wants is to not feel numb. Well, if real life has taught me anything, & I'm pretty sure that it has, it's that being numb is fucking underrated. Sooner or later you have to kill those pesky feelings because you're just tired of all the hurt & ache, & like OMG, this is turning so emo!
Largeman returns home to New Jersey to attend his mother's funeral. He hasn't been home in 9 years, for reasons that will be revealed throughout the movie. His father (Ian Holm) is also his psychiatrist, & if that's not fucked up, I don't know what is. He meets old friends of his while they're working as gravediggers at his mother's funeral. The always underrated Peter Sarsgaard is one of the gravediggers, & soon Largeman is headed to a drug-filled party, in a very trailer park way.
He meets the cute & available & lying Sam (Natalie Portman) while waiting to see a doctor, & whilst being humped by a dog. There's a first impression you don't want to make. Sam & Largeman do the Meet Cute & we're off & running, very slowly I'd say. Normally I don't have a problem with slow pacing in movies, but this movie, man, it was just ... molasses. Not molasses like in the Boston Molasses Flood of '19, but slow molasses, like get over the drugs dude.
This being Braff's first writing, directing & lead acting in a motion picture, there are bound to be some rookie mistakes. Firstly, his character & the road he was headed down towards, was just fucking bleak & disturbing, in such a way that I couldn't come back from. Great, you're getting off the medication because you met the cliched "Awesome Girl!" (who's kinda annoying to start with, but grows on you like moss), your mom died, & you're sick & tired of feeling numb. Maybe if you weren't on the FUCKING DRUGS in the first place... there's an elipse or whatever for ya.
The movie took me to a dark emotional place to start off with, & it never succeeded in bringing me back. I think I'm still there, doing something ricockulously unique, that I won't be remembered for. I mean, the movie was alright I guess, the performances were alright & the cinematography was nice, but... meh. This might just be another of those movies that I don't get (or get why people love it), but other than a couple scenes & whatnot, it was nothing special for me. 2.5 outta 5.
Roger Ebert's review of Garden State (2004)