Zach Braff and His Cannibalized Kickstarted Movie Clone

Sheldon skips a couple centuries for this one.

I rented Garden State during a lonely period in my life. It got me into the Shins and indie comedies that weren’t 100% ha-ha. I connected with Andrew Largeman, Zach Braff’s emotionally numbed protagonist, or at least envied his medically induced serenity. At the time, I counted it among my favorite movies, somewhere between any Tarantino movie and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I haven’t watched it since.

I remember the trailers for it. The goofy daydreaming doctor on Scrubs made a movie and it was quirkfest with Natalie Portman as MPDG. It had a quiet quirkiness that made it alluring to the misfit who wants nothing more than to seal their ears in headphones, listening to acoustic rock from the Pacific Northwest.

A little over a year ago, Braff caused an uproar by coming out and asking fans to fund his next movie via Kickstarter. The beef most people had about it was, “Why’s Hollywood coming in and asking for some money for a movie?” The assumption was that, if the movie needed to be made, Braff himself had the connections to ring in Hollywood or indie investors and make it happen. The way it looks, he did but he needed some extra scratch to boost the production up. It looks like he succeeded. Enter the trailer for the movie.


When I first saw it, I had forgotten it had existed. Seeing Braff’s mug yelling “Dammit!” at the beginning of the trailer gave me hope. And slowly that hope slipped from my fingers. The Shins jangling on acoustic with some melodic woo-wooing immediately evoked Braff’s last effort; indeed, many credit him for growing the Shins’ audience, so it’s understandable that he’d throw them a bone again—or they’d throw him one. It’s not clear just yet. And then we get a slow motion shot of children running down a road while James Mercer’s singing confirms any suspicions you might’ve had that the Shins were doing the soundtrack. Not a terrible thing to hear, mind you.

But then half of the spoken lines in the trailer hit the rim but never quite make it through the basket. As Braff’s character learns that his father’s going to be “laid up” for a while and needs someone to watch his dog, he laments, “There’s so much bad news, all at once.” It could be his delivery or the maudlin importance of the words themselves, but comes in like a speed bump. And then Braff tells his daughter to pick a wig that is “unique and amazing—like you,” as if he wants us to remember weirdo Natalie Portman with a fetish for the unique in Garden State.

It doesn’t stop there. Kate Hudson drops the truth bomb about how “Your boys will remember this time for the rest of their lives. It will shape who they are as men.” Braff serves up a truth taco to younger bro Josh Gad: “We both spent our entire lives wishing we could be something great. And now we’re finally called upon to do something that requires some actual bravery.” And then, to ice the truth cake, Braff says, “When we were kids, by brother and I used to pretend that we were heroes—the only ones who could save the day. But maybe we’re just the regular people, the ones who get saved.” Again, it may all just be the way the lines are delivered—with more gravitas than the words deserve. But it’s ham-fisted.

Finally, it hit me: I’ve seen a lot of this before. The Shins soundtrack, “unique and amazing” people, Zach Braff as a struggling actor with dad issues, people shouting at the elements, Jim Parsons in period garb—he’s done recycled his first movie. It’s one thing to say that Zach Braff has a distinctive flavor to his work, but from what it looks like just from the trailer, it’s all he’s got. I don’t think I’ve got the taste for it anymore.

It’s unfair to dismiss the film as a Garden State for the West Coast, trading suburban New Jersey for glitzy LA, based solely on the trailer. But for a moment, I wondered if there might be merit to the tired Hollywood method of film production. Could the fact that the script is fifty shades of meh be the reason why he couldn’t secure more funds in Hollywood? They churn out crap by the shovelful, but they know their audience. They’re not targeting the art house crowd with a Katherine Heigl flick. Who’s Zach Braff’s audience? Maybe it's not me anymore. His fans gave him money, so surely them at least. But others? Maybe it will be crap. But to those who funded it, it will be unique and awesome crap.