Notes on…

Garden State(2004)

Dir. Directed by Zach Braff

What if an unthinking John Green remade The Graduate and decided to use the word "retarded" a lot? Anyway, notable less for its canonical status as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl film (which, contrary to popular belief, was actually first coined in a review for the 2005 Cameron Crowe film, Elizabethtown), but more for its epic ratio of "soundtrack quality" to "screenplay quality".

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Synopsis: Andrew returns to his hometown for the funeral of his mother, a journey that reconnects him with past friends. The trip coincides with his decision to stop taking his powerful antidepressants. A chance meeting with Sam - a girl also suffering from various maladies - opens up the possibility of rekindling emotional attachments, confronting his psychologist father, and perhaps beginning a new life.