102 Minutes Wasted: A look back at Garden State by Jenny Jediny & Brynn White Many filmgoers feel cheated, irritated, even angry after a bad movie, and sometimes the sting of those lost hours just won’t go away. When discussing releases from the past decade, Garden State stood out as a true low point for both Brynn and myself, and this an ideal opportunity to exorcise that pent-up aggression. A breakout hit upon its release in ’04 (embarrassingly compared to The Graduate by Braff himself), this cliché dramedy was followed by several imitators (Elizabethtown, The Last Kiss, (500) Days of Summer), all masking superficial scripts with overstylized visuals, aggressive quirkiness and mass-consumed soundtracks. (Garden State is also notable in pop cultural terms for Natalie Portman’s Sam, recently crowned a Manic Pixie Dream girl via Nathan Rabin from The AV Club).
This is not a feature-length commentary track, but rather a video essay with commentary on selected scenes. Beware of spoiler alerts if you are not familiar with Garden State’s plotline.