Rating: 
Summary: Another great movie review!
Review: Is there something I just don't get? Cuase I swear this movie was so boring! I mean I thought it'd be great and artistic and all that cuase I heard everyone and their grandmother praise this movie to the moon, but I guess I just dun git it... Anyways I thought this movie was a monumental bore, I hated Portman's character, it just seemed to go nowhere and then went nowhere and nowhere. It was monotonous (scene one funeral, scene two drugs and alchol, scene three another funeral [for a gerbial, I almost cried cuase I miss Sampson and Delilah my Dwarve Hamsters, THEY WERE SO CUTE!], scene four drugs and drunkeness... and on and on and on). I guess I'm not a gifted art student type who could easily be moved by semi-intellectual blather, sorry guys! I can imagine all these art students watching it and pontificating about the common corralations in life that were so cleaverly portrayed and then I giggle like a little girl cause I think it's silly. In fact that's really funny, I should make a movie about that I'd be rich. I'd just have little pseudo intellectual musings inbewteen scenes of A) traveling on a motorcycle (50% of the movie) B) drugs, drugs, drugs (30% of the movie) and C) disfunctional parents (25% the other five percent is the pseudo intellectual musings that any college sophmore could engage in). I was kinda taken bakc, I thought this movie would be it! Now I love many kinds of movies, but I can only take so much art house cinema. I get the whole point, making movies to serve as an antithesis to escapism, but should we be exposed to the boring moments of life? Who really wants to waste time watching some Lithium addled post-teen who rivals only a brick in personality wander around with his no-life friends? Not me, I'm not saying I want some dramatic struggle to take place in my movies, but I do want it to be at least a little interesting, a mean come on do I really wanna watch a movie about New Jersey; as if I wasn't bored enough. So eh, it was boring and movies are supposed to entertain and enlighten this did neither, I'd be better off filing my nails or something. AIGHT!
Rating: 
Summary: For Natalie Portman...
Review: ...who really deserves 5 stars, the performance is that radiant, fresh and heartfelt. What a difference a director makes! Mike Nichols and (apparently) Zach Braff know how to get the best out of her, 'cause here, as in "Closer," she's luminous. (Are you paying attention George Lucas?) As for the rest of the film, this is one more "Graduate" wannabe, far too whimsical for my taste (i.e. forced humor), thinking it's saying something about disaffected youth and family relationships, but really isn't. The Braff character is a complete cipher, one whose last-minute change of heart is too little too late. Check out "The Graduate" if you want to see what this kind of film really should look like.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent in every way
Review: A touching, light-hearted and refreshing delight of a movie. One of the best movies out of the new wave of indie films sweeping the big screen.
Rating: 
Summary: Not perfect, but highly recommended
Review: As most of my moviegoing experiences these days have been, I sat in a room full of college students who lined up hours in advance to see The Garden State. And we watched in utter amazement, sadness, excitement, laughter...not even because it was THAT good, but because we were watching perfect reflections of ourselves on screen. After the screening, Zach Braff (who had, he told us, been sitting behind the audience the entire time) talked to us about his film, answered some twenty-odd questions, and truly revealed why this film was a piece of art. Yes, Braff himself was almost as entertaining as the movie itself. But The Garden State still held its own. Braff's debut film as writer, director and star, The Garden State involves the protagonists' (Braff) journey to re-find himself as he travels back to his home town in New Jersey. Previously defined by his tidbit roles as a Hollywood actor and his parentally diagnosed psychological illnesses, Braff rekindles old friendships and makes new ones along the way. Natalie Portman, who gives an outstanding performance, plays possibly the most well written female role I've seen in a long time. The energy exuded from her presence on screen is unmatchable and a wonderful contrast with Braff's underplay of his character. The plot has its moment, but is nowhere near the dynamic adventure of an oscar winning story. However, the little things carry the film. Also, the music is AMAZING and Braff's choice of soundtrack is most certainly one of the success stories of his film. The film is not without faults, such as lack of exploration in certain storylines (especially concerning the protagonist's father and the introduction of numerous characters who are never fully developed). However, the film's unique and intense direction and cinematography coupled with some brilliant acting make this film a must see. Especially for the college generation. Not perfect, but highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: 1969?
Review: awesome movie, very well written and acted, honest, touching.
Rating:
Summary: I liked it, but I just can't give it more than ***1/2 stars
Review: Garden State is a funny, slightly charming comedy about coming back home, finding yourself again, falling in love and letting the emotion grow where it was stopped dead by an event in your past. There really wasn't too many bad things to be said about this movie except for the fact that it was completely unmemorable and its storyline didn't seem to fit into the 102 minutes duration time of the film. After about 80 minutes I kept looking at the digital minute counter on my DVD player. So I guess what I'm trying to say was that it really dragged on.
I'll give the movie some credit as far as interesting characters and catchy dialogue go. And there were some pretty funny parts throughout the picture. But this is just the kind of film I watch, enjoy it to an extent, and completely forget about it the next week.
Rating:
Summary: A great addition to the cinema of New Jersey....
Review: Garden State is a prototypical "independent film," and I mean that in a good way. It has all the ear-marks of an independent film: quirky, funny, odd, off-beat, edgy, innovative. Writer/director/star Zach Braff is best known as an actor on the wonderful NBC sitcom, Scrubs. (He brings the same comedic sensibility to this film.) However, he is an honest-to-goodness filmmaker - he went to film school and everything. Like Kevin Smith before him, Braff has made a feature film homage to his native state of New Jersey - those of you who don't live here simply wouldn't understand. He plays an actor/waiter in LA who has to return home for his mother's funeral. Once there, he goes off his antidepressants and meets Natalie Portman, who gives the best performance of a Jersey Girl I've ever seen. The movie meanders a bit and is probably better viewed at home, but still it is an impressive debut. I hope to see more good things from Braff in the future.
Rating:
Summary: AMAZING!!!
Review: garden state is the kind of movie you can watch over and over again. movies these days are not made out of realistic moments. garden state is a beautiful rendition of events that could actually happen and change your life. the characters are real and rather than explosives and special effects, garden state focuses on lifes real meaning, love.
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated, hate to say it. AND WHERE'S THE BLOODY TRAILER??
Review: I am a trailer junkie, I admit it. When I saw the teaser ad for "Garden State," I fell in love with it. I downloaded it and watched it literally hundreds of times without ever having seen the movie. I'm talking about the one that's just images from the film, no dialogue, with that Frou Frou song playing over them. It moved me to tears, to words beyond speaking. I simply adored it.
But I never had a chance to see the movie in theaters, so when it came on DVD, I just bought it. For one thing, I figured that the trailer would be on the DVD, so even if I wound up disliking it, at least I'd have the trailer. But I wasn't worried. After all, with a trailer like THAT, how could this film *possibly* be anything but magnificent?
Like this:
1) THE TRAILER ISN'T ON THE BLOODY DISC! It isn't included with the extras at all! Not even the regular trailer, much less the one I fell in love with. This KILLS me. It's truly devastating. What in the world were they thinking in excluding it??
2) My big, fat, cliche-filled movie. So here's the "beauty" of this movie's breakdown: Boy is sad. Boy meets Girl. Girl makes Boy happy. Boy falls in love with Girl and everyone lives kookily ever after. The End. This is an overused, entirely tired formula for any movie, but it can work if it's done in a new and interesting way. ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," for instance, is an excellent example of how this formula can be twisted around and made almost unrecognizably new.) "Garden State" simply fails to make this a new journey for its audience (or at least for me). I did NOT believe that in four days Natalie Portman's character could have changed him that completely. I do not believe that she did anything remotely special besides be kute and krazy with a kapital "K" for the entire movie that would have endeared anyone to her. But she's Natalie Portman, so everyone buys it. Everyone, apparantly, but me. Aside from that, the cliches made the plot completely predictable. Anyone who couldn't see from the beginning of that airport sequence that he wasn't going to get onto that plane was probably just in the bathroom when it started. After all, who WOULD get on a plane to Los Angeles when they can stay in New Jersey and build a relationship with someone they met four days ago? That makes PERFECT sense.
3) Underdeveloped characters. Someone needs to inform M. Braff that a laundry list of "quirks" doesn't make someone a character, it just makes them a random person with quirks. N.P. was an epileptic girl who ice skates in alligator suits and buries hamsters and makes weird faces at weird moments. Peter Sarsgaard was a pot-smoking grave-digger who stole things from dead bodies and hung out with odd people. Few explanations are offered for any of these behaviors; they are just presented to the audience and people are expected to respond. I resepct the choice to leave some things open and let the audience make up its own mind about certain aspects of character, but what I cannot accept is caricatures as opposed to well-developed characters. I think Braff gets away with this primarily because of the actors he has chosen for these roles. Portman and especially Sarsgaard are both such amazing talents that it's almost impossible to see how little they've really been given to work with in the way of character development from the script. Maybe I've just spent too many hours analyzing movies as a film major, but I did see it, and I would like to register my disappointent formally.
In addition, Braff's character was really unbelievable to me. If he was so drugged up and zoned out for so many years that he couldn't even bring himself to express normal emotions, then why in the world would he have the desire to become an ACTOR? And additionally, I thought Ian Holm was wasted in the role of the father. If you have Ian Holm in your movie, then dammit, you freakin' USE Ian Holm in your movie. There are some deleted scenes with him that give us a bit more insight into his completely one-dimensional character, but even if they had been included, it wouldn't have been enough to overcome the fundamental problem.
The one positive thing I CAN say about this DVD presentation is that at least Braff didn't waste his commentary tracks. He has two, which seems to be a bit excessive, but he manages to avoid repetition for the most part. He doesn't offer any insights into the failings of his script, but I didn't expect that anyway. :-)
I gave it two stars because it really isn't a terrible movie. It just isn't a GREAT movie, or even a REALLY GOOD movie. It's an OK movie. If I had paid $8 to see it in theaters, I would have felt just fine about it, and I wouldn't have felt my money was wasted. But I never would have bought it on DVD. Since I did shell out $20 for the DVD and don't plan to watch it over and over again to get my money's worth, I DO feel that my money was wasted, but I guess I can live with that. Braff obviously has a lot of talent, and I look forward to seeing what else he can come up with. Maybe his next script won't have the same "I wrote this as my film school thesis" gleam to it and will be a bit more mature, and a hell of a lot more believable.
Rating:
Summary: Very good
Review: I feel that Garden State is more of an artsy and emotional film than anything else. While the plot was a little weak, the theme stuck with me, which is to live life to the fullest.
Zach Braff plays Andrew Largeman, a struggling actor who has basically been doped up on medications his whole life (mostly because of his psychiatrist father). He decides not to take them with him when he goes back to New Jersey for his mother's funeral. While in New Jersey, he meets up with some old friends and also befriends the free-spirited Sam, played brilliantly by Natalie Portman. She helps him in his quest to find himself and "break free" of the medications that have been holding him back his whole life.
I didn't really understand the purpose of some of the scenes in the movie (for example, the party at the beginning of the movie), but otherwise, I enjoyed the movie.
|
