...a delightfully quirky look at finding oneself and accepting who and what we are and what life is all about.
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They say you can't go home again, at least Thomas Wolfe said that in his novel of the same name, but what you can do is make a new home for yourself and visit it as often as you'd like. Of course, it's never the same, but, hey, often it's better.
Such is the case with twenty-six-year-old Andrew "Large" Largeman (Zach Braff), who finds himself forced to return home after the death of his mother. He's been estranged from his parents for some time, living as a struggling actor but mainly waiting on tables, and returning home for the funeral is not his idea of a good time. Not that he seems too particularly upset about his mother's death; he just doesn't seem particularly connected to anything at this time in his life.
If any of this sounds like a downer to you, I assure you it isn't. I watched writer/director/star Zach Braff's 2004 feature-film debut, "Garden State," a few days after watching a similarly small-budgeted picture, "We Don't Live Here Anymore," and found "Garden State" a distinct breath of fresh air. The movie is lighthearted, often whimsical, yet entirely serious about its subject matter, which pretty much tells the same story we heard from Mike Nichols in his more illustrious "The Graduate" way back in 1967. "Garden State," referring to Large's home state of New Jersey and to his own springlike rebirth, is joyful and charming throughout.
More so than its small-budget contemporaries, like the aforementioned "We Don't Live Here Anymore" as well as "Napoleon Dynamite," "Garden State" is about real people with whom we can all identify, at least if we are into or have passed through our twenties and have long since left home. More important, it's a film about emotional comings home, growing up in essence, again something with which most adults can identify. Also like "The Graduate," which spoke to baby boomers in a gently ironic tone, "Garden State" doesn't take a heavy-handed approach to Gen Xers, and the movie is never preachy. I enjoyed it quite a lot.
So Large comes home, where he hasn't spoken to his father (Ian Holm) in years. Like Ben Braddock in "The Graduate," Large is lost and drifting and cannot relate to the world of his father. Nor can he relate to the world of his old friends, most of whom are still wandering aimlessly, hanging out, and getting high. One friend, Tim (Jim Parson), works in a medieval-theme restaurant, wears a suit of armor to breakfast, and speaks in Klingon. Another friend, Mark (Peter Sarsgaard), works in a cemetery digging graves when he's not scamming local appliance stores. And another friend, Jesse (Armando Reisco), has just gotten rich inventing noiseless Velcro, bought himself a mansion, and remains bored.
Large thinks he may go through the rest of his life emotionless and detached until he meets Samantha (Natalie Portman) in the waiting room of a doctor's office. Sam is a cute young woman who recognizes Large immediately from his playing a small role as a retarded quarterback on TV. "Are you really retarded?" she asks him. "I thought you were really retarded." So much for intelligent banter, thinks Large. But Sam turns out to be much brighter and much more perceptive than the pretty airhead she initially appears to be, and the two of them strike up the most important friendship Large has probably ever had.
"You know that point in your life," says Large, "when you realize the house you grew up in isn't home anymore?" he tells her. It may be the first time in years, maybe the first time ever, that he's communicated seriously with anyone. Large is trying to find himself in a big (large?) way, just as Ben was trying to find himself in "The Graduate," and to underscore the point, there is Simon and Garfunkel-type folk music playing throughout the movie. At one point, there is even an actual Simon and Garfunkel song used. Generation X may seem to be facing new and challenging problems, but their difficulties have plagued Mankind for ages.
Then, we find out that part of Large's current depression and lack of direction stems from a childhood trauma, for which he has been on medication ever since. The trauma indirectly involves plastic, and it isn't hard for anyone who has seen "The Graduate" to make the connection with its famous most word, "Plastics."
All of the actors acquit themselves well. Braff is in a fully bemused Dustin Hoffman mode. Holm is stern but never overbearing. Portman maintains a quaintly bizarre demeanor, maybe a touch too precious. And Sarsgaard is oddly menacing yet perfectly good-natured. None of the characters are too well drawn out, but they possess a uniqueness that makes them worth noting.
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