Garden Land
dir. Zack Braff
Opens Fri Aug 13.

If Steven Seagal'southward On Deadly Ground has taught us anything (aside from the questionable exercise of blowing upward nature in order to salvage information technology), it is that movies where actors directly themselves often represent an opportunity to detect monstrous egotism in its natural, uncut state. From Chaplin to Costner, Ed Burns to Barbra Streisand, too many self-styled auteurs take their opportunities behind the camera as a go-sign to braze themselves squarely in the middle of their created universes, with every additional element a mirror reflecting dorsum at their imagined skillful side. (Don't sue, Barbra.)

Zack Braff's debut moving picture, Garden State, which he wrote, directed, and stars in, may very well be a similar act of egogasm (when you lot put Simon and Garfunkel on the soundtrack of your examination of disaffected twentysomethings, you lot're just asking for it), merely information technology features enough odd grace notes among the rampant navel-gazing to warrant a watch.

Braff, his bemused underplaying from Scrubs fully intact, stars equally a lithium-zonked actor clinging to past tenuous success (folks still remember his stirring functioning as a retarded quarterback in a Goggle box movie), who, following a family tragedy, returns to New Bailiwick of jersey after most a decade of self-imposed exile. As he goes off his meds and begins to gradually allow himself to back out of his withdrawal, lessons are learned, frozen relationships fracture anew, and an outrageously hot local girl from across the tracks (Natalie Portman) throws a lifeline. Alterna-hits run nonstop on the soundtrack throughout, no dubiety bachelor in a record store nigh you.

This is all relatively standard stuff at first glance, only much of the zing of the pic comes from the wobbly curveballs that Braff throws at the formula. Various expository guns discovered in the beginning act (such every bit the threatening medical condition of a major character, which would be milked for maximum pathos 99 pct of the time) are allowed to remain unfired in the third. Scenes peter out earlier or after you'd await. Secondary characters seem unsure of their own motivations earlier stumbling off into the wings, and the film features an intriguing streak of off-kilter surrealism in the early sections, reminiscent of the New Asian Wave. (I talked to Braff over the phone near his influences and he mentioned the usual suspects such as Harold and Maude and Annie Hall, just also, surprisingly, Todd Haynes' masterfully creepy Safe, which settles onto the unwary viewer like a bad rash.) It is to Braff'southward credit that such moments generally come up off as thoughtfully factored decisions rather than mere narrative confusion. More than the thwarting, then, that the climactic confrontation between father (Ian Holm, magnificent and severely underused) and son features moist-eyed speechifying that wouldn't exist out of identify in, well, a Goggle box movie nearly a retarded quarterback.

Braff, who has a history as a still photographer, has a definite center for the clever image and the occasional absorbing composition. (One shot in item, of the primary character blending in chameleon-like among some truly hideous wallpaper, seems destined for shrine status on dorm-room walls everywhere.) Some of his narrative inventions, like the erstwhile friend living in an empty mansion later on getting filthy rich for inventing soundless Velcro, may be a tad also precious, but his overall feel for the self-conscious slacker in captivity rings true. (He nails the awkwardness of existence just a little as well one-time for the kegger, for example, in a way that should make Cameron Crowe jealous.)

He also gets a major boost from his assembled bandage. Portman, freed from George Lucas' shackles and back in Beautiful Girls territory (just blessedly minus that earlier pic'due south creepy pedophiliac vibe), only glows in a role that could easily take crossed over into lethal levels of life-affirming perkiness. That she tin carry a monologue about a neglected hamster into lump-in-the-throat territory is perhaps the ultimate testament to her charm. Fifty-fifty ameliorate, though, is Peter Sarsgaard equally Braff's gravedigger buddy who has a genuine sense of menace that glints through his stoner façade. The dangerously unstable sidekick may exist a platitude dating back to Mean Streets, but Sarsgaard makes it seem like his character was besides busy committing minor felonies to watch those earlier films, and when the movie takes a seemingly ill-advised plough toward seediness in the tertiary human action, briefly threatening to borrow on Boogie Nights territory, he carries it through. The manager, sadly, proves to be a fleck of a liability in the lead role, with an initially ingratiating underplaying that eventually turns into an unreflecting void. The emotional inaccessibility of the main character may be what the movie's about, afterward all, merely Braff never quite allows united states to become aware of the gradual transformation process.

Garden Country seems poised to go a monster hit, at least on the indie scale; the Sundance fizz was deafening, and the wordless teaser trailer (available at www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/garden_state/) has led to a genuine Internet phenomenon, with legions of webheads waxing rhapsodic about the picture show and proclaiming how echo viewings accept changed their lives. (When I spoke to him, Braff seemed genuinely taken aback past such fan worship, while as well good-naturedly albeit that he occasionally scans the message boards for a heads-up.) As much as my inner cynic resists, I can sort of see where some of these folks are coming from. (Pause for a moment to fondly call up the lasting impact of Cusack and his boom box.) Braff's movie might not be maxim anything new, just at least information technology finds a reasonably clever, occasionally novel manner to say it. As far as cocky-consciously generation-defining, ego-tripping movies go, you could practice a whole lot worse.

editor@thestranger.com

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