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100Garden State gets it. Not since "The Graduate" has a movie nailed the beautiful terror of standing on the brink of adulthood with such satisfying precision.
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89There's even a Simon and Garfunkel tune on the soundtrack, which makes Braff's character seem like the only living boy in New Jersey, which, of course, he may well be. L'chaim!
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88Garden State is filled with characters you long to know more about, in situations to which almost anyone can relate. And that's as near a can't-miss movie formula as one can get.
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Writer/director Zach Braff has threaded a powerful and intelligent personal story through a genre all too rare today – romantic comedy.
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80A great debut from a promising talent.
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80Garden State charms with ease and moves with grace; it's warm but never mushy, languorous but never groggy, rueful but never despondent. It's like a perfect pop song--that thing that makes you smile and tear up at the same time.
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80Garden State illuminates a young man's overdue coming of age with unexpected depth and grace.
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80The movie never finds a consistent tone -- the humor is dynamically offbeat, the dramatic moments a bit canned -- but Braff's affection for his misfit characters and skeptical take on how people sell themselves short in America make this the truest generational statement I've seen since "Donnie Darko."
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75It's a hilarious and heartfelt ode to twentysomething angst. Braff has himself a winner.
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75This is not a perfect movie; it meanders and ambles and makes puzzling detours. But it's smart and unconventional, with a good eye for the perfect This is not a perfect movie; it meanders and ambles and makes puzzling detours. But it's smart and unconventional, with a good eye for the perfect detail.
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Though too dear at times, overly sentimental in its conclusion and sporadically overreaching to be the voice of a generation, it's otherwise emotionally spot-on as it follows Andrew back to his Garden State hometown for his mother's funeral.
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75Braff makes a striking directorial debut while leading a superb ensemble cast.
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75There's no denying the intelligence at work here, or Braff's skill at weaving off-the-wall humor and sight gags into a story that, at heart, is profoundly sad.
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75Sometimes veers off into preciosity. But it offers something rare in the bond between Andrew and Sam.
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75A fanciful little indie brimming with emo music and curious little vignettes, marks a self-conscious but very promising debut for "Scrubs" star Zach Braff.
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75The best performances are those of Portman and the resourceful Peter Sarsgaard (Shattered Glass) as Mark.
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75Though unlikely to have the lasting quality of "The Graduate," it feels a bit like that seminal film for today's generation.
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75Zach Braff, who shot the film near his hometown of South Orange, N.J., directed this drama with subtle flair and wrote a star part that perfectly fit his acting range.
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75Certainly Garden State is a very American specimen of debut indie form, its loose, goof-about scenes of comic melancholy reinforced with the glue of quirkiness over cracks in the narrative development.
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70When Braff keeps the tears and the kookiness in check, he takes us into some unusual, interesting areas of the human psyche. And makes us laugh a good deal while he's at it.
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70Braff is bright and has a quick ear for vernacular dialogue, and he's caught the look and the sound of his blitzed, prematurely disillusioned generation, which has had to live with more lack of definition than most.
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70Braff's naive romanticism is also lovely proof of the film's innocent heart.
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70Small, smart, off-kilter comedy.
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70An edgy quasi-comedy, it's very funny in places, touching in others. There is a little unevenness. But for a directorial debut, it's amazingly assured.
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70Garden State features some wonderful performances, chief among them an engaging, even courageous turn from Natalie Portman.
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67Zach Braff has come up with a charming, funny, melancholy ode to twentysomething angst.
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67While most movies would sink under the weight of such eccentricity, pretentiousness and earnestness, Garden State is so full of wit and the genuine heart of characters that you can't help but care about what happens to them.
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63A standard issue, first-movie navel-gaze whose cobwebs Braff meticulously sweeps away by directing the bejesus out of it. The photography makes loveliness out of the film's dank, hung-over atmosphere; the camerawork and editing lend the movie a luscious daydreaminess.
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63As long as you go into Garden State with reasonable expectations, its capacity to disappoint will be limited.
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63Braff's deadpan performance and dry reactions are deft, and his ability to shape a scene to a punctuation point is impressive, but he's all over the place as a writer.
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60Although Zach Braff's promising writing-directing debut is a bit affected, few actors with behind-the-camera aspirations succeed as well as the Scrubs star does with this melancholy romantic comedy.
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60Braff, and Garden State, give it the old college try, and at least some, if not all, of the sparks catch. Even if the movie doesn't quite take off, it doesn't leave you feeling stranded, either.
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60Garden State coasts on this considerable charm until it hits a brick wall in its final segments.
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60Feels too piecemeal and ultimately inconsequential.
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50What the movie lacks -- a big lack, not a fatal lack -- is a compelling character at its center. Everyone in Garden State is fun, skewed, strange and singular.
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40Say this for actors: Too self-centered to be embarrassed, they can be existential heroes of a (moronic) sort.
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40Mr. Braff's idea of self-discovery is my idea of narcissism.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 83 out of 102
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Mixed: 3 out of 102
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Negative: 16 out of 102
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