Garden State Reviews

Just finished watching but didnt see anything special..Maybe the ones who has this big family problems can get effected.Good act from Zach Braff,cute Natalie..for me thats all.

I've just finished this film and it's difficult to judge.
Even if Zach Braff is a very good actor, every time the camera stops on his face I expect he's going to say something stupid like in "Scrubs".
Of this movie, I like his coming back to a concrete reality even if I still think his old friends are living as 18teen years old while they've all passed the thirties....maybe a bit unreal...

I really loved that movie...it's a movie you can really relate to. By that i mean, that it isn't illustrated. It REALLY shows life as it is....very simple and straight....Zach Braff did an AMAAAAAZING job with this movie as an actor and director aswell

I don't like Zach Braff's drama acting but this movie was cool enough, very very indie. Great soundtrack, story passing so slowly and the end was sooo cliché. Lastly, Natalie Portman was great as always she is...

Had really high expectations for this film, probably unrealistically. As a first time effort, the movie was done admirably. However, I was somewhat disappointed after watching it. Zach Braff, the writer/director/lead actor of the film, has created a sincere work that has moments of brilliance but can't quite get there. It has heart, humour and just right amount of quirkiness and edge to keep the movie relatively interesting, but ultimately it fails to captivate the audience, in this case, me. The film is at its best when it's honest (such as the pool scene and the 'home speech'), but often than not it tries too hard to be 'touching;' sentimentalism thus takes over the film and stops it from going beyond the superficiality of 'trying to be meaningful.'

The relationship between Braff's character Andrew and his father is sketchy at best, and instead of exploring the father-and-son relationship in depth, the film focuses more on the romance between Andrew and Sam, played by Natalie Portman. This decision certainly makes the movie more appealing to its target audience - the teenagers, but I think they could've given the father more of a substantial role and made the movie more balanced. As far as the acting goes, I can't get past Zach Braff's character from the TV show Scrubs. I'm so used to his quirky and over-the-top character from that show that I just can't see him in a serious role. It's weird. Natalie Portman is fine, but for me, Peter Sarsgaard, who plays Andrew's best friend Mark, gives the most convincing performance in the movie.

For the most part, Garden State is a enjoyable movie. The ending reeks of cheese, and the movie in the end opts for the easy solution to be as crowd pleasing as possible. There are, however, some really nice moments that are genuinely moving and the dialogue is fresh and poignant at times. It just didn't live up to my probably unreasonably high expectations.