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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Garden State

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11:51 / 03.01.05

Portman's performance was the highlight of the film, but that couldn't disguise the fact that she had nothing to do. Nor did any of the other girls. They were there to look hot in wet bikinis and nothing else. To this end I thought it was quite a sexist film.

Some of the jokes were very immature. Dogs humping legs and nose mess jokes? In a coming of age film?

Also - I thought his two best mates were unpleasant and boring. If you're going to have a film where nothing much happens, you need to have really great characters to carry it.

13:03 / 03.01.05

I too got a whiff of sexism from the movie... I agree that Portman did the best she could with the role she was given, but her character seemed written by an "outsider" - ie, to the writer she's "a girl" primarily and a human being secondarily.

SPOILERS

It seemed a bit unbelievable to me that someone would instantly be best buddies with a person they hadn't seen for 9 years, but even if I accept that, the subplot with the best friend made no sense. All signs point to Andrew's visit being a few days long, right? So, on day one the BF meets up with his great buddy Andrew, and minutes later robs his mother's grave. Then we're supposed to believe that in the space of a day or two he has such a massive change of heart as to go to the lengths he goes to to get the necklace back. But despite the fireside scene, there's nothing written into the plot or character to evidence that change of heart. That's bad writing.

I talked about this movie with my boyfriend for a little while afterward in an effort to get at why it bothered me so much. I think my bf gave a pretty apt summary - it's as though Braff, over the years, had come up with all these Cool Ideas for Things to Put in a Movie Someday... A hamster maze that climbs up the wall! That's cool, I'll put that in a movie.... A guy who paralyzes his own mom! That's fucked up and cool, I'll put that in a movie someday.... A quarry that's this huge abyss, what a Cool Movie Metaphor, I'll use that someday - and then when he got the opportunity to make a movie, he threw in all his Cool Ideas without much thoughtful consideration of how or why they were relevant to this particular film. It's a personal pet peeve of mine, actually - I'm so sick of films that include details whose only merit is "coolness" - Cool is empty, it's not content, not meaning.

I don't know, perhaps I'm being too harsh... but I studied art and writing for my degree, and Garden State smacked of all the classic, green writing mistakes that most people learn to recognize and correct after just one year of writing workshop. I think Braff has potential, but he needs a mentor or a wise script editor or something.

14:58 / 03.01.05

Even though I liked the movie overall, I agree with this. There were many moments that felt like "This was written by a very young writer who needed more of an editor than he had here."

And I thought the ending was kinda lame.

Great soundtrack, though - the soundtrack lives on for me!!!

I listen to that thing a LOT.

16:35 / 03.01.05

i saw this over the summer. i grew up in a town in New Jersey where everyone i knew except me grew up to be weirdos doing nothing in particular with their lives. i moved to Southern California when i was 22. i'm 29 now, and this is pretty much what my life is like every time i come home. it has a deeply Jersey feel to it and on most levels it rings true for me.

it doesn't seem real all the time, but neither does NJ.

11:44 / 04.01.05

I saw this yesterday, and I quite liked it. I'd certainly like to see some more work by Braff, as I think he could (as he gets older, and matures) develop quite nicely.

Anyhow. Painfully knowing soundtrack; I know this film's about six months old, but a lot of the music is surprisingly old, especially if you're from the UK. I mean, I love Frou Frou and all, but that album's about two years old and yet it's presented as a hip, up-to-the-minute thing.

I found Natalie Portman got more and more wearing as the thing went on, but I liked Braff's numbness. Not sure about the whole prescription-drugs-are-fundamentally-bad message, but definitely liked the being-OK-is-good message. Also, the fact that sometimes, when your friends are on drugs, they're kind-of boring. And then when you're not on drugs and they are, they're still boring. And when none of you are on drugs, they're still boring.

Some nice touches, though; Braff has a better ear/eye for the little things. Tim-the-knight, for instance, was a great little role. And Jesse reminds me strongly of a friend of mine. Also, I felt Mark's return of the necklace was surprisingly touching; Large let him get away with it, rather than clobbering him (when he saw Mark thieving from the other coffin's owner) but Mark nevertheless returns it. He's not that much of a jerk.

I think ultimately I liked it because deep-down, it was warm-hearted. As I said above, OK is good.

10:24 / 06.01.05

"Let's do something noone's ever done before. Let's go.... Bleaggh!"

Shallow.

As.

Pie.

10:57 / 06.01.05

Was it meant to be deep?

I enjoyed it but then I'm a sucker for any movie where two disillusioned characters fall in love/become friends (Enternal Sunshine/Lost in Translation an eh Breakfast Club).

I'm also a bit of a sucker for Zach although he does seem a little bit of a knob on his blog.

I'm just a sucker I guess.

11:10 / 06.01.05

You mean... when he does things like this?

"Well it didn't take much to convince the girl what the right thing to do was... so after wrestling her cell phone out of her hands (via tickling of course) I was three phone rings away from an answer. I was hoping to get her voice mail actually, but she answered. I explained who I was and how I got her number. She was silent. I explained that the film isn't for everyone and that it didn't bother me that she didn't like it, but she had also said some things that weren't that nice about me and I asked her why she felt she needed to do that; was she trying to increase her number of viewers from 11 to 12? She told me she never imagined I would ever see her show. I explained that the fancy BMW 745's in her country have televisions in their dashboards (they are illegal, in my country I informed her) and that any decent tickler in the right place at the right time could move mountains.
I then felt enough time had passed in our discourse to enter the next phase of our relationship. I felt it was time for me to critique her show. I won't go into details, because I'm sure I wasn't as clever as I remember, but I do think I offered up some constructive criticism. Including the fact that the dead ferns on her set were very Public Television and even though I personally was not a fan, she and her program were better than that."

11:11 / 06.01.05

I thought perhaps the Natalie Portman character was meant to be annoying -she was really irritating from the start, but it's only as the movie progresses that Large starts actually reacting to that. Compare his deadpan insistence that he wasn't a retard when he met her in the hospital to his being rude about her when they were all talking in front of the fire ("Ooooh, you're really freaked out") -I thought that was meant to indicate he liked the fact that he makes her react at all, since he'd been zoned out on lithium for the past 16 years. Maybe, however, I'm just defending that because I liked the film, basically because, as Paleface said, it seemed warm-hearted.

11:15 / 06.01.05

That's exactly the bit I was thinking of goldfish.

13:00 / 06.01.05

I saw this film just a few weeks ago, and for me the most remarkable thing is how forgettable it is. I'm even reading this thread with a furrowed brow, searching to recall most of the scenes mentioned.
I do remember liking it at the time. I've always enjoyed Braff in Scrubs, and I thought Portman was really confident and had decent screen presence in it. Don't know about anyone else, but it struck me as being quite a period piece in lots of ways - kinda part of the early 90s slacker school. I remember thinking that I would have liked it even more when I was a teenager.
But the thing is, I only know these things because I remember saying them at the time. I can't remember any of it now. Strange.

D Terminator XXXIII

17:04 / 04.05.05

Having been fed Scrubs for a while, I found the melancholic tone a surprise. So much so, in fact, that I turned it off after 20 minutes. I watched the rest of it a couple of days ago and all I'll say is... It was good and slight. Good enough for it to be enjoyed, but slight enough to be forgettable. And every other point I had, Smoothly's covered it so I'll shut my yap.

17:05 / 03.06.05

I can't believe all the Braff-love here. I saw this movie when it was the new hot critical buttery goodness in theaters, and couldn't believe how annoying the movie was. Natalie Portman! She's so wise and spunky! Live your life to the fullest! Believe in yourself! Its philosophy seemed like it had been cribbed from high school yearbook signings.

I don't like watching people masturbate. That was my biggest problem with the movie - Zach Braff had so many important things to say, and so many things to teach us about life, and if we would only just listen to him, we'd all be better people. He wrote this movie to listen to himself (through his pixie-proxy, Natalie Portman) pontificate about the importance of TAKING RISKS and SEIZING THE MOMENT and being DELIGHTFULLY QUIRKY YET STUNNINGLY ATTRACTIVE. Excuse me while I puke. Writer/director/star is a credit that always gives me pause, and in this case, should have made me pause outside the theater, then turn around and get back in the car.

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