Garden State

(Fox Home Entertainment, 12.28.2004)

Zach Braff's Garden State is overflowing with indie-flick cliches (oddball characters, stylized photography, wacky animal hijinks) yet it manages a scruffy, guileless charm anyway. The narrative doesn't add up to much -- all Braff's zonked-out main character achieves by the end is a resolution to get better -- but it goes down smoothly enough.

Braff the writer and director is clearly making a shot at the indie-king title held by folks like Wes Anderson and David Gordon Green. He has an actor's fondness for his fellow thespians and a natural eye for composition, but his storytelling is sometimes vague and weightless, substituting camerawork and indie-rock montages for vagaries like plot.

Braff the actor neither compels nor repels your attention in the lead role. He doesn't beat you over the head with a hucksterish eagerness to please -- especially refreshing considering the ample opportunity for him to do so -- but he doesn't give you much to latch onto either. This may or may not be the point, given that the character is in a constant prescription-med haze. But Braff's admirable tendency to stay low-key ends up muting the film, just when you want it to break loose and soar.

Garden State is better regarded as a showcase for the talents of its supporting cast, particularly Natalie Portman as a daffy free spirit (her best role in a while), Peter Sarsgaard as Braff's creepy, grave-robbing high-school buddy and particularly Jean Smart, sadly hilarious as Sarsgaard's pot-addled mother. The roles teeter towards familiarity but the performances are honest and empathetic and the film is better off for it.

Fox's DVD showcases Lawrence Sher's scope photography as well as it can, the film's low-budget origins only fleetingly apparent. The disc is jammed with extras (two informative commentary tracks, a featurette, outtakes) but most rewarding is a collection of deleted scenes, in particular, a confrontation between Braff and dad Ian Holm that is as moving and potent as anything in the film proper, though it was understandably sacrificed for the greater good. -- Jason Comerford