What I admire about ‘Garden State’ more than anything is the quirky little moments. There are so many of them, from the faucets that go off one by one, children crossing the street like baby ducklings, dogs humping, even the knight stomping through the room with a bowl of cereal. It’s pretty unconventional that so many of these moments come and go one by one throughout the entire movie, but given the main character’s catatonic state it becomes a necessity.

Andrew Largeman is an oblivious actor living in L.A. who is known for playing a mentally challenged quarterback on a made for TV movie. How oblivious? In one scene he arrives at work to see the spigot from a gas pump still in his gas tank. He is in exile from everything around him–his room is completely white and his medicine cabinet is full of prescribed meds. That says a lot about his state of mind. Then one day he gets a call from his father from New Jersey telling him his mother has passed away (she drowned in the tub). Rushing to fly home he forgets his medication and this is where his metamorphosis beings.

He meets up with his old friends from high school who are also gravediggers (“We’ll call you after we bury you mom”). The gravedigger Mark is a stoner who plans on living off of ‘Desert Storm Trading Cards,’ and another who got rich off of silent Velcro. They are the kind of quirky friends who get older but never change. Soon serendipity hits and he meets Sam (The beautiful Natalie Portman) who is the type of girl you wish God would bring to you if he loved you enough. She is sarcastic but has a sweet laugh that just makes you take it serious.

Both Mark and Sam want Andrew to open his eyes but his father would rather have them shut. Not because he is a bad man, but because he thinks he knows what’s best for his son better than he does. It was he who put Andrew on medication and why his own son hasn’t been home in nine years. Andrew was responsible for his mother’s handicap but both men see it different (the father thinks he was acting out, Andrew was just the victim of fate).

I heard about ‘Garden State’ through word of mouth and was amused right from the start. A lot of people have this as their personal favorite (my friend has this in his top five of all time). It’s not high on my list but not because I hate it; I’ve just seen a lot of better movies. I was always turned off by the ending because it was too easy to end like that. Is that too harsh? It probably is. After all, everyone deserves a happy ending. But ending aside this is a brilliant triumphant film for Braff who has a good eye and good ears too (the soundtrack is amazing). You see this and can tell he has potential to be a great filmmaker.

A great film works when you have a character that you sympathize with and want to succeed. All through the film everyone is trying to get him to look around. Maybe that’s why there are so many quirky moments in this film. We just want Andrew to stop and open his eyes.