Garden State

Here is a movie that brings a 35 year old man to tears every time. Perhaps one of the most beautiful American movies in the last several years, Garden State proves that write/director/star Zach Braff is most likely a genius. If a beautiful poem or painting were transformed into a movie, it would be Garden State.

Garden State is a drama about a struggling and over-medicated young actor living in Los Angeles who must go home to New Jersey after a ten year absence and deal with his past and the recent death of his mother.

Painfully honest and real, and boasting amazing performances by Braff, Natalie Portman and the always brilliant Peter Sarsgaard, Garden State speaks to a generation of people who have gotten to their 30's only to find out, dreams don't always come true and life doesn't usually go the way we wanted it to, but somehow we can still be OK.

If you can ever listen to Simon & Garfunkel's the Only Living Boy in NY again without breaking down in tears than you are a bigger man than I am because during the scene it plays, I break down every time. The rest of the soundtrack is phenomenal as well, with such great bands as The Shins, Coldplay & Frou Frou, even if you don't love the movie like we do, I'll bet you pick up the soundtrack.

Braff, star of NBC's also excellent SCRUBS, has given my generation the first real movie we can relate to in Garden State and we owe him big because it shows that we aren't a bunch of losers and slackers, but a bunch a generation trying to clean up the mess the previous generation's greed and ignorance left for us.

Terry
September 2005