Garden State

Fox Searchlight Films and Miramax Films presents

Starring: Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Ian Holm, Peter Sarsgaard

Directed by: Zach Braff

Rating: **

Plot: A television actor comes back home to New Jersey because his mom died. He in his zombie like mood goes around town meeting up with old friends and meeting new one's as he tries to figure himself out and also piece together his life from outside in. Sadly though this movie is all style with no substance and will leave you wishing Zach Braff stuck with what he does best. Not being in movies.

Acting: This movie over all has a weird vibe to it which was cool. Sadly the acting didn't exactly ever catch up to the style. The leads Zach Braff and Natalie Portman just suck. Sorry to be so straight up but they do and because they are so bad the movie just never moves on. The other actors like the amazing Ian Holm and Peter Sarasgaard try their best to keep the movie going but they don't have enough screen time to do it. Zach Braff's character is suppose to be an actor but yet he walks around like a zombie for two hours, so how am I exactly suppose to believe this guy can be out there and be an actor since the only role he would ever get would be on movies like 28 Days later or Dawn of the Dead. Natalie Portman who I actually like from the Star Wars movies and other films fails here but its not her fault. Her character changes just too much changing attitudes too fast for the audience to really react to. One second she is acting like she's thirteen years old and then she totally changes into an older acting woman. Just too all over the board for me character wise.  Peter Sarsgaard almost steals the show here with some very under the radar type acting. This guy can be huge with his amazing performance in the film Shattered Glass and now here he can show some depth. Sadly though with such weak performances from the leads that alone almost kills the movie.

Directing/Writing: I understand this movie is basically just a plat form for Zach Braff to become main stream. Well if he does he will have to work a lot harder than what he did here. This movie has a lot of great visuals and fun scenes but lacks depth or meaning. When you get rid of the interesting but pointless scenes you get a regular and simple love story, which just sucks. The movie takes you around but nothing really happens that's that stunning or amazing. Like I said there are some great scenes with Zach Braff at a party and when he wakes up he is met by a guy in knight armor who we later find out the guy works at Medieval Times. So I don't know the movie tries to hard to be powerful and to be an art film and it just flew over my head and I realized it was trying to trick me and that pissed me off. So mainly this movie is trying to push Zach Braff in are face and since he really doesn't have that big of an acting talent it is hard. He stars in what I believe is a poor mans Seinfeld called Scrubs an over the top show that tries too hard. So I guess that is why this movie is getting a lot of attention and maybe a lot of people fell for the style, I didn't.

Overall: It's cute but I thought it was a lot of style with no content and was a waste of time. A simple movie with a pretty cover basically. Avoid this movie and wait for DVD and don't watch Scrubs that show blows ass.