SCRUBS star Zach Braff steps out from TV to direct and write this Sundance Film Festival discovery. Braff plays Andrew Largeman, a struggling actor in Los Angeles who travels back home to New Jersey for his mother’s funeral. Largeman hasn’t been home for nine years and hasn’t cried since he was child. He hasn’t felt much emotion at all for a long time because ever since he could remember he has been on lithium and various other mood-altering drugs proscribed to him by his psychiatrist father Gideon (Ian Holm, THE SWEET HEREAFTER).
Largeman has stopped taking his meds, because he feels that he has been living in an emotionless fog for way too long and needs to find himself. When home he meets up with old friends including Mark (Peter Sarsgaard, SHATTERED GLASS), who works digging graves and spends most of his time in a different kind of drug-induced haze. Largeman then meets the eccentric, young woman Sam (Natalie Portman, CLOSER), whose infectious personality puts a smile on Largeman’s face for the first time in ages.
This kind of film, where a young man goes home to find himself, has been done many times before. However, Braff creates a fun take on the standard story with interesting issues of over medicating young children and the aimlessness of Generation X. There’s a lot of quirky characters, but Braff makes them real. The eccentricities are rooted in the characters’ personalities. All the acting is great, especially Portman, who is becoming one of the great young actresses. The film may get a bit too quirky for its own good toward the end, but it doesn’t ruin things. I liked the characters. I liked the film’s style and mood. I just really liked this movie.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
