Garden State: A Review of the Indy/Cult Favorite

Zach Braff's Garden State uses quirkiness as a way to disguise shallowness. The film is SO quirky and strives so hard to be quirky that it almost succeeds in distracting you from how dry and shallow it really is. What Braff does in the film is essentially take a very boring, apathetic and (allegedly) self-based protagonist and tries to make him interesting by surrounding him with a series of bizarre characters. 

There was no overcoming the apathy in the film and the story unfolds like they took a trip through the screenwriting cliche factory and grabbed everything off the bestseller section. It's a Fish-Out-of-Water movie, meets a Coming-of-Age movie, meets a Quirky-Small-town movie, meets a Meet-Cute, meets a Troubled-Youth-Coming-To-Terms-With-His-Parents movie.

The plot of Garden State involves a recently successful actor (Braff himself)named Andrew returning to the hometown that he hasn't been to in x number of years for the funeral of his mother. We learn that Andrew has been on presription drugs his entire life, prescribed to him by his estranged psychologist father and that due to a big falling out he left his New Jersey hometown to pursue school at a young age and ended up a succesful actor. Braff plays Andrew, well, exactly like somebody who has been on an inordinate amount of prescriptions his entire life. 

He deadpans the entire movie. He speaks in a low key, passive, monotone voice. He keeps the same facial expression through almost the entire film. He is deliberately and passionately apathetic. Braff shoots the film with Andrew being the focal point of everything. He's in the foreground a lot, he's the center of attention, he's in almost every frame and he's the focal point of each scene.