Garden State (2004)
Film:
DVD:

Written & Directed by Zach Braff
Starring Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Ian Holm, Jean Smart

Features:

• Running audio commentary with scribe/director/actor Braff & actor Portman
  
• Running audio commentary with Braff, director of photography Lawrence Sher, editor Myron Kerstein, & production designer Judy Becker
  
• Deleted scenes with optional commentary
  
• Making-of featurette
  
• Outtakes and bloopers
  

Released by: Fox
Rating: R
Region: 1
Anamorphic: Yes.

My Advice: Own it.

Andrew Largeman (Braff) has been coasting through life in a bit of a chemical haze...all of it prescription-related. Living out on the west coast and trying to make it as an actor, the coasting comes to an abrupt end when his father (Holm) calls to inform him that his mother has died. He returns to New Jersey for the funeral, and does so in such a hurry that he leaves his chemicals behind. As his system starts to operate without them for the first time in years, he has a chance meeting with a young woman (Portman) and the convergence of events might change his life if he's not careful.

Let me be the first to go on record and just come right out and say it, shall I? Zach Braff, you bastard. You're the kind of magnificent bastard I want to just smack in the face and then buy you a drink. Not only did the guy write a movie, direct said movie, star in said movie, but he got Natalie Portman to play his girl in said movie, and then got Sir Ian Holm to play his dad in said movie. Oh, and apart from all the lucky crap that occurred--and is documented in the commentaries--the movie's good.

It's an odd little film, that's for sure. It has that Wes Anderson kind of quirkiness to it...where reality is skewed, but it never gets far enough away where you feel like these people can't exist in the world you know. Why? Because the world is a messed up, whacky place, and we all know it. So it stretches the boundaries but never really breaks them. Braff has created one of those real coming of age stories, because there really is no age at which you stop growing up and stop learning. Sure, you pass into manhood, but there's plenty of stages after that. And Largeman is going through one--a big one.

Braff is able to play the character perfectly, a guy who's finally coming out of his cocoon. Portman...can I just say how refreshing it is to see the girl actually act again as opposed to the Hell of the Sci-Fi Director Who Can't Direct she's been trapped in for the last how long? Ian Holm's part is rather small, almost cameo-sized, but he's Ian Holm, so what can you do about that? And lastly, Sarsgaard is excellent as Largeman's relatively shady friend.

The commentaries are quite nice. Portman and Braff share quite a few laughs together on theirs, including the last minute addition of Portman's barefoot tapdancing and the fun of working with a motorcycle that wouldn't behave. The one with Braff and crew is also nice as they share some excellent anecdotes, like buying a boat for a dollar and how much fun it was to do overhead shots of a ginormous pool. The most priceless bit is in regards to one of the dogs in the film, from the doctor's office waiting area. The phrases you use to get the dog to do his thing...Jesus. Hilarious. Also mind-destroying is the off-handed remarks that you get, something to the effect of, "Oh, yeah, you see that lighting effect on the back wall where it perfectly frames that characters? Yeah, that was a total accident." Or there's also, "Yeah, I never noticed, but the columns in the back there make it look like we're two characters on stage in a Greek tragedy or something, didn't see that before." Oh, Braff, you...you bastard.

Here we have a rarity as well: deleted scenes that you can actually see could have worked in a longer cut of the movie. A lot of Holm's character went to the cutting room floor--for the better--but an incredible scene with Portman in a bathtub (clothed, calm down) was completely reworked. It's fascinating to watch the sequence in its original order, though it's further disgusting that a line about tears, "I'm never going to be able to get them all," is lost. When you have lines that good that you have to cut to make room for better ones...ach. Bastard. The making-of featurette is standard fare, although refreshing in that there's very little smoke-blowing going on, and the outtakes and bloopers are very strange, especially the ones involving the aforementioned dog.

The film gets better every time I watch it, frankly. And when I'm not shaking my fist at Braff for being so off-handedly good at what he does, I'm seeing more things to hate him for with each viewing. An exceptional first film, it makes us eager to see what the guy's going to do next. Definitely worth owning.