Movie Review: Garden State

I've just finished watching a movie I'd been wanting to see for a while: Garden State, written and directed by Scrubs man Zach Braff, who also shares the leading role with Nathalie Portman. If you are familiar with Zach Braff and his work, you'll definitely recognize his "touch" in Garden State.

This (too?) sophisticated romantic comedy is about.... Well I don't really know what this is about. The movie doesn't really have a consistent and major guideline throughout, and I found the whole thing rather confusing and sometimes boring. It's about a romance that eventually becomes a love story between two completely different individuals. Well, at least that's the theme for the second part of the movie... It's long before everything comes together to form some kind of plot. There's also a large portion when the three heroes are on a quest to find a mysterious gift for Braff's character. I thought it this was offered too much screen time and didn't really make the plot progress (but again: what plot, really?). The rest is about death (loosing a parent), old friends, drugs, lavishness, hometown... In short, it's about life. So maybe I shouldn't read too much into it and absolutely want to find the movie a theme, and just take it as it is: a portrayal of a human life, with all its inconsistency and flaws. And let's be honest: Braff's and Portman's performances are top-notch and the soundtrack is one of the best movie soundtrack I've ever heard (it doesn't really surprise me knowing Braff's taste and love for music, as seen on Scrubs).

But still, even if some parts were funny or emotional, some others bored me. And as the credits roll out, I was left with a strange and mixed taste in my mouth, not really knowing how I should feel about what I'd just seen. So, to sum up: Garden State is, for me, neither good nor bad but if the purpose of the movie was to move the audience, it didn't really get to me. C+