Garden State

Early in ?Garden State,? Zach Braff's exceedingly likeable first feature, Andrew Largeman, a 26-year old LA actor played by Braff, attends a party with his old high school friends where they get exceedingly high on a variety of chemical substances. Largeman joins in by taking a happy-faced tab of Ecstacy, but as the others become more-and-more sexually charged, he sits on the sofa smiling and staring into space, apart from the rest.

It is an image that Braff, making his writing/directorial debut, uses often, as if to underscore Andrew?s alienation from the world around him; and it brings to mind other films with similar themes, especially ?The Graduate? with its equally troubled hero played by Dustin Hoffman, an actor who resembles Braff so much that he could be his father.

Yet Braff isn?t making an emblematic Generational-Gappish comedy, instead scores with one that chronicles his on-screen alter-ego?s struggle with coming to terms with a conflicted past. Aside from ending, when his script becomes something of a screenwriting thesis, ?Garden State? is an endearing comedy that is never as precocious as it could be. Beneath the quirkiness, there?s a smart, tough interior: Reality bites, and has left Andrew its victim.

Much of Andrew?s alienation stems from an accident that occurred when he was 10-year?s old that led to his mother becoming a wheelchair-ridden paraplegic. 16 years later, she has died and he returns to his Jersey home to attend the funeral.

Once back he makes the rounds of renewing old acquaintances, who include a pot-smoking grave digger Mark (Peter Sarsgaard) and a smart-ass inventor Albert (Denis O'Hare) who has made millions by selling his patent for noiseless Velcro and amuses himself by throwing parties in his furniture-deprived mansion. He also makes some new ones, namely Sam (Natalie Portman), an eccentric pathological liar whom he meets at a neurologist?s office. They become fast friends, and then lovers; the only problem is that Andrew can?t feel much of anything. A lifetime of prescription anti-depressants has left him numb. ?Considering how much Lithium you?re on,? says the neurologist he visits to diagnose his mysterious headaches, ?I?m surprised you can even hear me now.?

Those drugs have been prescribed to Andrew by his father, a no-nonsense psychiatrist (Ian Holm) with whom he has conflicted relationship. Coming to terms with him, and his own drug dependence, becomes the major thrust of the movie. While some of this emotional texture is predictable: you know, for instance, that when Andrew says he hasn?t cried for years, a tear or two is in his future; his struggle to self-acceptance is smoothly textured into the whole.

What saves the film from becoming overly precious is Braff?s fresh sense-of-humor. His script is exceedingly smart, chronicling Andrew?s homecoming with a nice blend of laughs and pathos. Much of the film?s charm comes from the soundtrack, which includes vocals by Nick Drake (the patron saint of manic-depressives), the Shins, Coldplay, and Simon and Garfunkel (?The Only Living Boy in New York,?) the latter drawing another connection to ?The Graduate.?

Braff, best-known for his work on the sit-com ?Scrubs,? is enormously appealing in his lost boy persona; who would have thought, though, that he?s such a good director? He does a fine job of underscoring Andrew?s alienation in visual terms, and elicits some memorable performances, namely Sarsgaard as an embittered townie for whom chemical dependence is a way-of-life, and Portman who makes the most of what could easily be a cloying role as the young woman who helps re-energize the aimless Andrew. There are strong cameos from Jean Smart, as Sarsgaard pot-smoking Mom with a thing for younger men and Holm as Andrew?s remote authority figure. ?Garden State? has the appeal of an underdog, telling its story in a leisurely manner buoyed by its oddball characters and shaggy-dog hero. It?s smarter, funnier, and far less obvious than you think it?s going to be, which proves to be its saving grace.