Product Details

• Actors: Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Kenneth Graymez, George C. Wolfe
• Directors: Zach Braff
• Writers: Zach Braff
• Producers: Gary Gilbert, Ann Ruark, Bill Brown, Dan Halsted, Danny DeVito
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• VHS Release Date: December 28, 2004
• Run Time: 102 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (407 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00065GWKG
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #305,306 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Zach Braff (from the TV show Scrubs) stars in his writing/directing debut, Garden State--normally a doomed act of hubris, but Braff pulls it off with unassuming charm. An emotionally numb actor in L.A., Andrew (Braff) comes back to New Jersey after nine years away for his mother's funeral. Andrew avoids his bitter father (Ian Holm, The Sweet Hereafter) and joins old friends (including the superb Peter Sarsgaard, Boys Don't Cry) in a round of parties. Along the way he meets a girl (Natalie Portman, Beautiful Girls) with demons of her own; bit by bit the two offer each other a little healing. Plotwise, Garden State is familiar stuff, a cross between The Graduate and a Meg Ryan movie, but Braff has an eye for goofy but resonant visual images, an ear for lively dialogue, and a great cast. The result is surprisingly fresh and funny. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker

Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff), a struggling actor, arrives in his native New Jersey with some extra baggage: his paraplegic mother has possibly committed suicide, he's been on Zoloft since forever, and his one major acting credit is as a retarded quarterback. This would be a difficult burden for any young man, let alone a début movie. But Braff, who also wrote and directed, keeps the tone light with some very funny homecoming scenes. There's a party where Large is greeted as "Jersey's De Niro," a run-in with a high-school friend turned cop, and, like a winning bass line, the smirking wit of his stoner friend Mark (Peter Sarsgaard). The movie is also lifted by the presence of Natalie Portman, perhaps the ultimate ethereal home-town girl. Braff eventually takes the movie to emotional places where only the extremely tenderhearted will follow, but there are a lot of nice moments that resonate, and a beautiful soundtrack of moody, interior music. With Ian Holm as the icy father and songs by Nick Drake, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Shins. -Michael Agger
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This movie is a must-own., September 27, 2004

By 

Joshua Peterson "Joshiebear" (San Diego, Ca, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Garden State (DVD)

I found so much of this movie answered the questions i had been having in my life. It made me feel so good about what I have and ok with what I don't have. It made me see what is important in life. It sounds cliche to the maximum, but I laughed, I cried, and.....well I laughed more than I cried, but I left the theater (twice) with a complete and utter sense of awe. This is a spectacular movie.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ah, Natalie Portman! -- just let me watch while you live..., November 30, 2004

By 

R. David Roe (Hixson, Tennessee United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Garden State (DVD)

I'll have to admit that for the first ten minutes or so of the film, the casual coarse language used by Largeman (Zach Braff)'s high school buddies seemed like a gratuitous and slightly strained reach toward "hipness," in effort to appeal to a younger generation of moviegoers. Blame this in part on my being on the other side of the generation gap. But as I began to know the characters better, it dawned on me that this WAS the younger generation (at least a real part of its disenfranchised subculture, one of which I know very little) and offers an honest representation of the way they speak.

There is a tremendous heart to this film, characterized when Braff, Natalie Portman, and Peter Sarsgaard's characters both literally and metaphorically unleash a scream into the "eternal abyss." Their pent-up frustration stems from the recognized irony that each of us is trapped in a world not of his own making with all of its seemingly irrational expectations and demands. Though we may anesthetize ourselves from the sad truths behind our sustaining myth of self-determination, we risk blinding ourselves to the great redeeming aspect of our existance: the love of the people around us.

Natalie Portman as Largeman's girlfriend, Sam, is utterly luminous here. Not to mention she made me fall in love. I am embarassed to say I had to wait for the end credits to discover who this wonderful actress was (I have religiously avoided the obscenely over-merchandised Star Wars films of late and knew little of her adult work since her childhood debut in "The Professional.") Meryl Streep -- your spiritual daughter and future heir is growing up quite nicely.

The film's great heroic act belongs to Sarsgaard's character who leads Largeman and Sam on a bizarre odyssey through the small town's seamy underbelly in quest of an equally bizarre "gift" for Largeman. His gift becomes an understated but moving act of redemption. Redemption is what the film is about. The fact that each of us posesses the power to in some way redeem one another is the movie's great hope.

I understand the squeamish who might balk at the R-rated language. But the lesson here is that there can be redeeming qualities (and even shared values) among those who don't quite view the world through the same eyes. Before you close yourself off from someone else's world that you don't understand, just stand there for a moment -- as on Boo Radley's porch -- and view the world from their shoes. The universe soon begins to look a little different. And a whole lot larger. Don't miss this one.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Shock!!!, December 30, 2006

By 

Nick (Switzerland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Garden State (DVD)

I had never heard of that movie until recently, and I had no idea that it was both written and directed by Zach Braff. Within about 10 minutes into the movie, I knew that whomever directed this was definitely talented, and whomever had written it was equally talented. By the end of the movie and the credits, I realised who was behind all this, and I was surprised. I like Zach Braff very much for his acting, but until then it was unknown to me that the guy was so gifted behind a camera and a pen.

Even though the main plot is relatively simple, this movie has truly compelling bits of weirdness and oddities. If you're into details, you'll probably love this film as much as I do; not a second of this movie is a bore, and I'm still amazed at the tireless richness of it. The direction is splendid and the substance is pure, not to mention the soundtrack which lets you know that someone is a tasteful listener of music (that being Mr. Braff, again).

Natalie Portman is absolutely stunning in this movie. She blew my mind. I guess that seeing her as queen Amidala in Star Wars made me think she wasn't anything special as an actress, but in "Garden State", her true potential comes out shining and exploding. She truly is amazing and talented; that film totally changed my perception of her as an actress, now I know she is genuinely good. So is Braff; and the two together - well they're just a fantastic pair.

Compared to most movies, this one comes as a breath of fresh air. It's inspiring too because it does so much with "so little"; for as I said before, the details here matter. To name but a few: silent velcro, skating alligators, epilepsy security helmet, house-boat, etc.

I can't recommend this movie enough. And I can't wait for more work from Zach Braff, who I now know is very promising as a director and writer. Honestly, I put very much hope in him. I didn't see it in 2004, but if you have to see two movies from that year, they would have to be "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Garden State".

A must see.