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Garden State & Napoleon Dynamite
Prime cult-film material, vintage 2004, Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite both premiered at last year's Sundance film festival, where their 20-something, first-time writer-directors landed big studio distribution deals. The two films went on to become sleeper hits at the US box office. Napoleon Dynamite cost about half a million dollars to make and grossed $44m more than that in North America alone. Garden State cost about two and a half million, and grossed nearly $27 million, still a massive return on its investment. (Admittedly both benefited from savvy and expensive marketing campaigns which would have eaten into that profit somewhat.) In Britain they were released in cinemas within a week of each other at the very end of the year, and four months later here they are on DVD. 
More than these coincidences of timing, these two comedies share an ambiance of affectless self-absorption which makes the 90s slacker comedies seem positively passionate in comparison. Call it the 'new vague'. In Garden State our 20-something homecoming hero Large (played by writer-director Zach Braff) is supposed to be anaesthetised to the world as he comes out of a ten year addiction to the meds prescribed him by his angry father (Ian Holm). Stuck in their own dead-ends (two of them are actually gravediggers) his mates operate on a similar strategy of stoned withdrawal. Only Natalie Portman's cute kook seems half-alive, and the movie latches on to her like a leech before it succumbs to the terminal therapy-culture clichés which are the 21st century's version of the vapours. 
But Large is a veritable live-wire compared to Napoleon (Jon Heder), a gangly teenager whose body seems to have been assembled from spare parts which don't quite fit, and whose zomboid demeanour is the source of what passes for humour in the film. Of course, everyone else in the movie is similarly comatose (again, love interest excepted), and they don't require drugs to get them there. Idaho is all it takes. That and the scrupulously deadpan treatment prescribed by director Jared Hess, who sets up all manner of quirky eccentricity to humiliate his characters on screen – even a time machine – then stands way back to remove himself from the scene. At best, the film fluctuates on the borderlands of smug condescension. How much of this can be forgiven in return for the astonishingly exultant finale is a matter of taste, I guess. If you get the impression that I didn't relate to these movies' studied rejection of the outside world, their zoned out comic abjection, you're absolutely right – but I have to admit it might be a generational thing. Both films have struck a chord with young audiences who are clearly getting something from them I just don't see. And that's okay. After all, they wouldn't be cult movies if everybody liked them. Tom Charity 
More information about Garden State & Napoleon Dynamite » Critics' Reviews
Radio Times
Zach Braff's engaging puppy-dog charm and sharp comic timing played a big part in the success of the TV comedy Scrubs. Those qualities are very much to the fore in this, his first major starring role. But it's his talents behind the camera as writer and director that really impress. The story is familiar enough: an actor is forced to re-examine his rather empty, aimless life when he returns to his home town in New Jersey for the funeral of his mother. But Braff's thoughtful, mature script neatly sidesteps most of the obvious clichés, while as a director he shows a fine eye for offbeat composition. The performances are uniformly excellent too, particularly Natalie Portman, as the quirky local girl that Braff befriends, and Peter Sarsgaard as his old grave-digging school friend. It falters near the end but this is still a fine directorial debut.
Inconsequential comedy of a man trying to find himself among a town full of eccentrics and discovering someone to love. Sunday Express Truthful, touching, insightful and inspiringly fresh. Members' ReviewsReviews Voted Most HelpfulMost Recent Reviews |
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