Cady's Take:

After receiving a message on his answering machine from his father telling him to come home for his mother's funeral, Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) heads to New Jersey for the first time since he was 16. Though he's been medicated since middle school by his psychiatrist dad (Ian Holm), he leaves the shelves of pills behind and decides to face his past with a clear head.

While home he meets Sam (Natalie Portman), one of those spontaneous, quirky, freewheeling sorts who change the lives of everyone they meet. Adding the right warmth and vivacity to the role, Portman creates a lovable character that offsets the gloom and pessimism of the supporting cast which includes the fabulous Peter Sarsgaard as Mark, a high-school buddy who has ended up digging graves and smoking a lot of marijuana.

"Garden State" is about Andrew's struggle to reclaim his identity by waking from his drug-induced, sedated lifestyle, with a unique and unconventional homage to small town life.

Even though the film occasionally sputters in different directions and involves many inactive characters, it captures that post-college, pre-marriage, mid-20s disorientation feeling perfectly. I think the story is one of the year's best.

This is a surprisingly deep, humorous, and enlightening film with beautiful cinematography and amazing music. I have a great desire to see this one again!

Lately we have been watching a lot of my favorite kind of movie - not a genre, but a movie that I go into with little or no expectations and find myself so surprised, it makes the movie that much better. " Garden State " did not have me jumping for joy, since I have seen "Scrubs" and while Zach Braff (as Andrew) is funny, I simply didn't think " Garden State " was going to wow me. Wrong! This movie is hilarious and heartwarming. The characters have quirky but not outrageously bizarre families, and the attention to detail is outstanding.

My favorite thing about this movie is the timing. There is a certain rhythm to delivering jokes, or even in a dramatic scene, but this movie is sort of syncopated in terms of when the payoff (emotional or comedic) arrives. It is very difficult to describe, but being caught off guard by the joke is always a good thing as far as I am concerned. If you know when and how the laugh is coming, what good is it really?

Natalie Portman just shines as Sam, an epileptic that Andrew meets in the waiting room of the neurosurgeon he sees about the headaches he's been having after giving up anti-depressants. Remember the little girl, Marty, she played in "Beautiful Girls"? Sam is a grown up Marty - smart and funny and irreverent, if a bit less self-confident. Other notable appearances include Peter Sarsgaard as Andy's best friend Mark (when is this guy going to win an Oscar?) and Ron Liebman as Dr. Cohen. Do not rent Garden State this weekend - buy it.