Into the eye of the zeitgeist.

I finally dragged myself to to pop cultural force that is Garden State. I thought I was really going to hate it. While seeing "A Zach Braff Film" on the poster of the film you're about to walk into might excite the legions of Scrubs fans out there, yeah it doesn't so much excite me.
Amazingly I didn't hate the whole movie.
Just major portions of it.

Anyway, here are the pros and cons.

PROS:

• Natalie Portman. I want her to be my lying girlfriend. Even with her pre-fab zany family that only a writer could love/invent. I want to make out with her, even if she's always insisting on listening to The Shins. I want to be at parties where she'll strip to her panties and go swimming. She's perfect. She even makes Zach Braf an OK actor in their scenes together.
  I want Natnat to make more movies.
  
  
• Peter Sarsgaard. This guy's a great actor. He's got very little to work with in the film, he does his best, he walks away unscathed.

CONS:

• Zach Braff the actor. Those big scenes that he's written for himself... you know, the big thundering part where he confronts his father over all the baggage he's carrying, etc. Yeah that doesn't so much work out.
  
  
• Zach Braff the writer. Maybe Zach the actor can't connect all that well because Zach the writer didn't craft a character with much depth. Oh sure, he tries to make the character tortured and hurt and searching, but there's so little there. Also bad: the entire subplot with Ian Holm as Zach's dad. Youch. Sucks. Oh and even worse: the Wes Anderson-lite magical realism.
  
  
• Zach Braff the director. You get the picture.
  Watching the movie, I kept wishing that Zach had found a better actor, let someone sharpen his script, and then handed the project off to someone with a vision. Oh that's right, but then you wouldn't have a vanity project. Which is all this is. I'm fine with vanity projects and rampant narcissism in film, just have the talent to back it up. But props to the Braff, he managed to write a really redundant homage to The Graduate/post-collegiate ennui, convinced people to let him direct and star in it, and then somehow convinced Natnat to be in the film. (Let's pretend that we don't know that in real life, Zach is currently exploring the most kosher parts of Ms. Portman.) Bravo, Zach. That was some cunning work.
  
  And finally:
  
• The soundtrack by KCRW. I like KCRW too. They play some great music. But there is an art to the whole "mixtape as film soundtrack" approach. Cramming every second of the film with The Shins and Coldplay and Frou Frou and Iron & Wine (covering The Postal Service no less!) is annoying and gratuitous. It also makes me think that you have shitty musical taste when you cram so many Morning Becomes Eclectic-approved songs into a film. It's as if you have no other musical reference than what's being piped to you from Nic Harcourt.
  

OK, that's the rant.