Wow! New Jersey Actually Looks Pretty Good!
I'll be totally honest with you. When I first heard about this movie, I was skeptical. I was thinking "Why did Zach Braff, this goofy guy who is on a goofy show Scrubs, make a romantic drama movie?" So I was against it for awhile. Then I been hearing great things about it and how it really isn't a romantic drama...well it it sort of...but there's funny moments...oh just see it for yourself.
So I did.
Zach stars as Andrew "Large" Largeman who lives in L.A and pretends to be Vietmanese to work at a Vietmanese restaurant. He hears that his mom died and he flies home to New Jersey for the funeral.
There he finds out that his old friend Mark is a grave digger at the cemetary and Mark invites Andrew to a party. There, Andrew takes a bunch of drugs and pretty much trips out. He wakes up the next day with the word "Balls" on his forehead and spots a guy in knight armor grabbing for milk. The knight turns out to be some guy named Tim who banged Mark's mother the night before, and this pisses Mark off to no end.
Because of constant headaches, Andrew goes to some clinic and there he meets a horny seeing eye dog and Samantha, played by Natalie Portman. It's a mystery at first as to why she's at the clinic but she reveals later on that she has epilipsy. And she's a big fat liar most of the time. And she's just kind of weird in general.
He offers to take Sam home but on the way he decides to visit his newly rich friend Jesse. He recently became rich cause he invented "silent velcro" and he's now a multi-millionare. When Large and Sam go visit him, Jesse is shooting flaming arrows in the sky, and one nearly lands on Sam.
Large drops Sam off and he gets a tour of her home, which include a big ass habitrail. And she has an adopted brother named Titembay who was one of those Sally Struther's "Please save the starving children of Africa" kids. One of Sam's hampster dies and they go bury it in the little weird pet cemetary she's got going on in the backyard.
Later that night, they go to Jesse's place again where it's revealed that Andrew can't swim, but he's the reason his mom was in a wheelchair most of her life. It's kind of a fucked up thing and I'll let you watch the movie yourself so you can see how it happened. But as a result, everyone thought Andrew was kind of a messed up kid so his dad, a psychiatrist, put him on a shitload of pills, which he's been taking all of his life.
On Andrew's last day in Jersey, Mark says he's got a big surprise for him but he's gonna need a ride to "track it down". So Andrew, Mark, and Sam go off on a very odd journey to a discount store where they run into a creepy dude named Benson (Not the black butler, that would've been cool), a hotel where Method Man is a bellhop and they all hide inside the walls to watch the people in the hotels bang hookers, and finally to a very large quarry where they meet a man named Albert. Albert lives in a boat that overlooks the quarry and his story is kind of odd and long, so just see the movie yourself.
Anyway, it's finally revealed that the thing Mark's been tracking down was pieces of Andrew's mom's necklace which looks like one of those little games where you gotta get a metal ball into a hole. Mark figured it would mean a lot to Andrew if he had it instead of buried with her.
So, Andrew is getting ready to take off, he says his goodbye's to Sam, which is hard cause they're falling in love with each other, and Andrew takes off. Does he go back to L.A? Does he ask her to go with her? Does he decide to stay? Where is that large automobile? Where is that beautiful house? Only time will tell...
...or you could just watch the movie yourself.
That's really the best thing to do in this case cause it's visually stunning and pretty damn cool and there's a shitload more to the story but it's hard to put into words. Just...it's a kickass movie. See it for yourself.
If anything, see it for the brief mention of Corky from "Life Goes On". Wonder what he's up to lately?
3 stars.
"Garden State" on IMDb.com:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0333766/