Garden State

It’s only fitting that one of the best movies I’ve seen this year has a bunch of kick ass previews, so let’s start there.

SURVIVING CHRISTMAS—Ok, so this is the weakest of the previews, but it still looks pretty funny. I didn’t get much of a sense of what the movie is actually about except that Ben Affleck is trying to get a family (with James Gandolfini as the patriarch) to have the best Christmas ever and it’s really pissing the family off. It looks funny enough to spend a matinee with. And any movie with both Catherine O’Hara AND a scene where Ben gets hit in the head with a shovel has to be at least passable.

CLOSER—Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Clive Owen and Natalie Portman. Good enough for you? No? Well, how about a story of sex and betrayal? No? Natalie Portman playing a stripper?

I thought that would get you. The uber-beautiful foursome play couples who switch partners and betray each other. Looks like it could be a great, thoughtful film with a truly adult part for the lovely and talented Miss Portman. Can’t wait.

SIDEWAYS—After Election and About Schmidt I’m ready to see anything that Alexander Payne does. And this story of two men on a bachelor party trip that turns into a soul search looks like it could be just as good as those two. (I haven’t seen Citizen Ruth, so I can’t say much about that one.) It stars Thomas Hayden Church as the betrothed and Paul Giamatti as his friend who wants to show him the better things in life. When Paul really falls for one of the women they find for a night (Virginia Madsen), his whole outlook on life changes.

I can’t wait for this one. It has to be good.

I (HEART) HUCKABEES—Speaking of idiosyncratic directors, David O. Russell has certainly made his share of strange ones. Spanking The Monkey, Flirting With Disaster and Three Kings were all great movies (I’ve only heard about Monkey, actually…sorry) and this one looks like it could keep his streak going.

Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman play a pair of existential investigators…or something like that. I’m not really sure what the hell this movie is about, but it also has Mark Wahlberg, Jason Schwartzman, Isabelle Huppert and Naomi Watts, so the cast is awesome. This is another one that I can’t wait for. Looks like it’s going to be just as weird and great as Russell’s past flicks.

FINDING NEVERLAND—Johnny Depp as J.M. Barrie. Kate Winslet as the woman who inspired him to write about Wendy. It’s hard to see Kate as the mother of four boys, but I guess it could happen. (Funny, I don’t feel old enough to have four kids…but we’re the same age. Suddenly, I feel very old.)

I love the story of Peter Pan, so it’ll be cool to see where it came from. And with Johnny and Kate in the cast, how can you go wrong? But director Marc Foster has tackled execution and racism (Monster’s Ball) and infant death (Everything Put Together). Can he handle magic? I guess we’ll see.

THE LIFE AQUATIC—I’m always up for a new Wes Anderson film. Especially if it stars Bill Murray. This time he’s a Jacques Cousteau-type (his ship is called the Belafonte) who leads his weirdo crew (which includes Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett and Noah Taylor) through a tv show about the titular life. When he finds out that he has a son (Owen Wilson), he now has to incorporate him into the mix.

Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Angelica Houston and Bud Cort also star and, yes, I’m already in line.

Now let’s see a different story about Jersey than we’ve ever seen before. This one doesn’t have anything to do with gangsters or rock stars.

Every once in a while, a movie comes along that speaks to an entire generation. The Graduate did it in the 60s. Say Anything in the 80s. Reality Bites (despite itself) in the 90s.

Now, the 00s have Garden State. High praise, indeed. Especially considering that it’s was written and directed by a guy whose only real experience has been small parts in small movies (the biggest one being his first,Manhattan Murder Mystery ) and the lead role in a sitcom (“Scrubs”). Zach Braff may not have much experience, but he’s obviously learned a lot from directors like Hal Ashby and Wes Anderson.

Andrew Largeman (Braff) is 26 years old and he has no clue who he is. He’s been living in LA trying to make it as an actor (of course, he’s actually a waiter), but that hasn’t gotten him any closer to himself. When his father (Ian Holm) calls him to tell him that his mother has died, he decides that it’s time to go home, if only for four days. He also decides to leave behind all of the medications that his father prescribed to him when he was 9 years old.

Throughout the four days back home (and has he comes out of his drug induced coma), Large finds out that he might be better off than a lot of his old friends (including Peter Sarsgaard, Alex Burns and Armando Riesco). He also meets Sam (Natalie Portman), a free-spirited girl who does and says anything she wants to do, even if it’s a lie. If ever there was a reason to come out of a coma, it’s her. But even she has her self-doubt.

Large (and Braff himself) comes from a generation that has been told that it needs medication in order to be happy. We’ve been told that therapy is the way to get in touch with ourselves. We’ve been told that, in order to be successful, happy, well-adjusted people, we have to be successful in some venture that makes us a lot of money. We have to find ourselves.

And what’s so funny about that is that we’ve gotten very lazy in that search. We’re approaching 30, but we can’t stop being kids. We’re grown-ups who still make dick and fart jokes. A lot of us are content with grave digging jobs as long as we’re not bothered by our parents to “make something of” ourselves.

And, you know, as sad as that may seem, that’s the way a lot of us like it. We’re slackers. All we ask of life is a little fun and love. We all want to be unique, but we’re ok with being unimpressive.

There are those of us who see the folly in that kind of attitude. But we also see the folly in doing something that makes you miserable just to get ahead. I could try and try for years to get ahead at the company that I work for right now. I could make all kinds of money doing it. Would I be happy? Hell, no. I would be absolutely miserable because it’s not a job that I want to retire from at 65.

Large feels the same way. He’s been a waiter/actor for so long that he’s started to lose faith in himself and his talent. He’s almost embarrassed by what little talent he might have. That is, he would be embarrassed if he wasn’t so heavily medicated. But now that he’s able to feel, he only feels love for this new person in his life. And, just possibly, that’s all that matters.

If you have ever been a disaffected young adult, go see this movie. I saw a little too much of myself in the movie. (Especially the early plane crash scene.) Even if you were never this heavily medicated (I’ve never taken any of the stuff they talk about in the movie), you will definitely see a little bit of yourself in the eyes of Large as life passes him by. And you will wish that there was a girl like Sam in your life to wake you up. (Although I kept thinking that she was in high school. Natalie still looks 16.)