Garden State (Zach Braff, 2004)

[mfunk9786]

High Fidelity must've been a hellscape for you.

[hearthesilence]

Those were the best scenes in Almost Famous.

[thirtyframesasecond]

High Fidelity must've been a hellscape for you.

No, I liked that. It didn't feel like Rob was trying to be 'hip', those guys were ("look at me, don't I listen to cool music? that you've apparently never heard of")

I imagine James Mercer owes Zach Braff a beer though for the careers heads-up.

[jojo]

It was never a favorite, but I don't recall it being that bad. Braff has drawn a lot more ill will over the years for various reasons, which may account for some of the malicious hate against the film - in 2004, I didn't really hear anything about him outside of the critically adored Scrubs.

It's not great, but its not really bad, and never was. Every once in a while some bunch of people hold up something as some kind of totem pole to snark on. I'm guessing Garden State is for many people representative of the kind of 'hipsterism' that everyone now hates. Ironically, kicking Garden State has probably become its own form of 'hipsterism' as well. I remember the same thing happened to Nicholas Cage a few years ago when there was some internet movement that tried to convince everyone he was the worst actor of all time.

These things are more representative of cultural attitudes than the actual quality of the subjects in question.

[Gregory]

The HuffPo article seems absurdly cruel too, actually. Where were all these people when the film was released?

The author of the HuffPo piece hasn't necessarily even seen Garden State but simply saw an article about this on Jezebel and put the same story on HuffPo with a "H/T: Jezebel" link. Not having seen it but saying it's "obvious" that it's "nauseatingly terrible" is a safe, popular opinion now. The assumption/viewpoint in many of these articles is that "we" all loved it when it came out but then quickly grew up and moved on, and now it's great snark fodder. Everyone wins, including Braff as it keeps his name in circulation while he films his next picture. Apparently being "news editor" at HuffPo means not reporting but getting paid to screw around on the internet.

The funniest thing to me was Braff saying that he enjoys Vice's "reporting" and appealing to their sense of decency with "You are better than this."

EDIT: Spotted on HuffPo news editor Hilary Hanson's Twitter in less than a minute: "I've never actually seen Garden State."

[copen]

Looks like he did write/direct another movie last year. Wish I Was Here (2014). It got very bad critic reviews. When Kate Hudson is praised as the best thing about your movie, you have serious problems.

[jojo]

Looks like he did write/direct another movie last year. Wish I Was Here (2014). It got very bad critic reviews. When Kate Hudson is praised as the best thing about your movie, you have serious problems.

Was that the movie he went on kickstarter to get funding for?

For the longest time, I thought "The Last Kiss" was written and directed by him as well, but it turns out it was Tony Goldwyn who directed it (he'll always be slimy Carl from "Ghost" to me ). I liked Garden State considerably better than this one.

[domino harvey]

We have a thread for his other film, feel free to peruse it at your own peril