October 7-13, 2004

naked city

Hating On Garden State

the sound of settling: Garden State's Zach Braff and Natalie Portman get a little too comfortable.

Your girlfriend probably loved it—and maybe even you too, you emo pussy—but here's why this movie is fucking evil.

by Joey Sweeney

Sentiment, of the great American sloppy kiss-on-the-cheek variety, doesn't come easy these days. Even when we're having our heartstrings pulled, there's always some snotty jerk-off writer making sure we see the giant red neon wink to let us know that he knows. Gone are the days when you could watch a movie and get swept up without being reminded just how much you were getting swept up and how mom-jeans of you that really is.

As modern conundrums go, there are worse. And what we lose in feeling we make up for in a more sap-free world, one where that kind of shit is relegated to Touched By An Angel, et al. Once a year, though, the tear ducts seem to open, and you get a Lost In Translation: a movie that's gushy enough to connect with an audience but self-possessed enough not to make you feel like a total sucker. This is a system that seems to have been tacitly in place for at least the last few years, and for the most part, it's worked. You got your Magnolia/ Punch-Drunk Love over here, maybe a little Wes Anderson over there, and hell, I'll even throw in the more Oxygen-network moments in the Spiderman franchise for good measure. Dear Movies: We're getting what we need from you. Thanks.

And like clockwork, here is Garden State, in all of its huggy, polar fleece, first-two-months-of-dating glory, demanding your tears and foggy, fuzzy, Ritz-enlightened gaze as you trail out into the city after the screening, desperate to smash and grab for a chance to co-opt its post-post-punk poesy.

Garden State is the directorial debut from Zach Braff, who people will swear up and down is really funny and cute on Scrubs, but this in and of itself feels like a friend telling you that fat girl has a really great personality.

By hook or by crook, Garden State has jockeyed itself into being this year's Lost In Translation. But here's the problem: The movie is a cynical piece of shit, pulling the same lame puppet strings that people get all up Spielberg or Shyamalananana's grills for. And those nudges and winks? Man, they are all over the place. Worse still, it's basically an ad for iTunes, Puma, Zoloft, Red Bull, Netflix, Bumble & Bumble and so on. Nobody likes to be told they're a cliche, and ultimately, Garden State sucks because it mints a new one.

Before I get into just what that is, though, let's give credit where credit is due: Garden State is a decent enough movie, if not culturally defining. For the uninitiated: Struggling L.A. actor, Zoloft'd to the gills since he was knee-high, comes home to his native Joisey for his mom's funeral only to realize the kids he grew up with are even more fucked than him. While he's at it, he hooks up with Natalie Portman, essentially recycling her role from Beautiful Girls, which was—holy shit—the same goddamn movie. In the end—call me a spoiler; I'll call you a sucker if you didn't see it coming—Braff's character blows off his acting dreams for a quiet life of God-knows-what with Portman. In, yes, New Jersey. "We'll work this out," he says, breathlessly, Portman in his arms as his plane departs without him. Like hell we will. Hopes and dreams: 0. Part of you that is still into Natalie Portman: 1.

For a first time out, though, the Braffster is hitting gold: At present writing, his box office is careening dangerously towards $23 million, the well-selected soundtrack is doing great as something of an iTunes juggernaut and annoying girls everywhere are dragging different boys to it in hopes that one of them will see how deep liking this movie makes them.

What Garden State is really all about is lowered expectations, and the film's so poorly written it's practically a commercial for them. Worse still, it has found an audience. It has struck a chord. "Smart" people all over the country, the over-thinkers, the compromisers, the cubicle jockeys who really wanted to be making films for the Canadian board of animation—for years now, these folks have been reaching out to the pop culture marketplace, looking for a piece of film or music or literature that articulates just how much they suck, and how much their lives suck, and how they're probably just a little too comfortable to fix it. Here, in this moment, in this place, Zach Braff's number has come up.

What Garden State really is, then, is a heaving sigh of poetic defeat, a fiercely romanticized portrayal of the moment when youngish adults, as they often do, just throw in the towel and settle for the closest thing. Chris Rock has joked that we are a nation of B and C students, and there's something in Zach Braff's onscreen charisma that makes you think he's almost pushing forth his doughy regular Joe as some sort of mark of everyman punk ethos. Sure, he gets off his meds because he pretty much realizes there's nothing wrong with him, just as when you really boil it down, there's nothing wrong with anyone, is there? We're all pretty regular here!

This is what Garden State celebrates, and exactly why it has to be stopped. The Church of Lowered Expectations in this country has to be getting filled up right now. I can't imagine that there's any more room at the inn.