The Wichitan - Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls Texas

MIDWESTERN STATE UNIVERSITY | October, 6, 2004

ENTERTAINTMENT

'Garden State' maintains its Humanity
Richard Carter | Staff Reporter

The good thing about lithium is that it helps bipolar patients beat the debilitating extremes of mania and depression.
The bad thing is that it hinders any real feelings of joy and sorrow by the patient. At least, that’s the case for Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) in “Garden State,” one of the best films of the year.
A part-time actor and full-time waiter, Large returns home to New Jersey from Los Angeles, after his mother passes away. Awash in headaches and desperate to feel something about her passing, he stops taking his meds, which his emotionally reserved psychiatrist father prescribed for him years earlier.
Large starts embarrassingly encountering members of his old crew, including a slacker friend who digs graves, a goofy guy who made it rich on a lame invention and a cop who asks him how he performed after he pulled him over.
There’s the occasional game of spin-the-bottle with possibly underage girls, talking to people about his role as a retarded quarterback in a TV special and what he actually is doing back in Jersey after all of these years. One friend thought that he had offed himself.
The characters and setting are strange in a sort of Kevin Smith (“Clerks”) way, with the exception that it never devolves into comic book land. The characters in “Garden State” feel real, at least as real as anyone in a backwater Jersey town is going to be.
Besides, there’s no rehashed and overdone Jay and Silent Bob slacker characters, and for that we can be thankful.
Things begin to change for Large when he meets Sam (Natalie Portman) at a neurologist’s office. She’s cute, is something of a pathological liar and has an intriguing back story.
These characters are clearly the product of dysfunctional parenting, and yet it’s these quirks that make them interesting. If we had to live with these guys and gals, on the other hand, they might not be so endearingly intriguing.
Sam and Large bond, drive around on his motorcycle (she refuses to ride in the sidecar because they’re for bitches). And along the way, we discover what caused Large to freak out a long time back.
The magic of this revealing film is in watching two emotionally distraught characters come together, and how their friendship makes them more human.
“Garden State” never turns sappy, and manages to keep its wit without losing its humanity. I don’t think you can say that about any of the Smith films, though “Clerks” sure seemed like it could have lead to something more than “Mallrats” or gasp “Jersey Girl.”
Written and directed by Braff, we are impressed by the substance of his main characters, Sam and Large, and their performances (when do we ever not like the emotionally resonant Portman with the exception of “Star Wars?”).
But just as good are Braff’s short character sketches and his strong supporting cast.
We meet each of these lesser characters for only brief periods of time, but we feel like we somehow know them, and are experiencing them from the perspective of Large. It’s all-strange, but then returning to your home town after time away is supposed to be both a little familiar and unsettling.
Like any really good independent film that comes to town, there were exactly four people at the 7 p.m. showing last Friday night. Catch it before it leaves, unless you happen to enjoy the usual NASCAR fan-watching fair.

Disney's most recent animated release not Original Entertainment
Jason Kimbro | Staff Reporter

Hollywood has been cashing in on one of its latest cash cows: the animated film. This isn’t necessarily a new thing, though, for Disney has been cashing in on this for years.
The difference now is that the computer-generated films are the only bankable forms of animation that the movie studios can depend on, with such flops as “Brother Bear” and “Home on the Range” haunting Disney.
With this in mind, their lack of competition over the years has alleviated as well, with such animating powerhouses like Dreamworks Animation, the force behind this week’s cinematic delight: “Shark Tale.”
Skipping pass the usual pokes and jabs I give unoriginal slop such as this, here’s the gist:
Sharks are the Mafioso of the sea, as if you didn’t know. The Godfather shark, Don Fino, voiced quite decently by Robert De Niro, is ready to pass his leadership down to his two sons Frankie (Michael Imperioli) and Lenny (Jack Black).
There is a problem, though. Lenny is not much of a shark’s shark. He will not eat anything and to add pain to the embarrassment, he is overly kind to all the other fishes in the sea. Why oh why can’t Lenny be more like his brutish brother Frankie?
On the other side of the reef lives Oscar (Will Smith). He is a simple fish, working at the Whale Wash (which consists of an annoying cover of the classic 70’s song). Working alongside Oscar is the cute little pink fish Angie (Renee Zellweger), who happens to have a crush on him.
Oscar has big dreams of becoming someone big. He desires to break out of his shell of nothingness, working the blue-collar, or I should say, blue-gill life.
After a mix-up consisting of $5,000 owed to his boss Sikes (Martin Scorsese), a loathsome puffer, he is to be vanquished by two rasta-fied jellyfish henchman (Doug E. Doug and Ziggy Marley).
All the while, Frankie has been ordered by Don Fino to take Lenny out and show him how to be a real shark. The two sharp-toothed brothers come upon the Rasta-jellies torturing poor little Oscar.
The jellies get away, Frankie urges Lenny to attack, Lenny does not, so Frankie decided to eat Oscar instead, when all of a sudden, BOOM! An anchor haphazardly falls out of nowhere and lands on Frankie’s head, killing him on the spot. Lenny runs off in despair.
The jellies here the commotion from far away and decide to go back and see what happened. They come upon Oscar, who is standing on Frankie’s carcass, and automatically assume that he is this incredible shark slayer and that he is indeed a tremendous force to be reckoned with.
Oscar decides to go along with this tall tale and of course his lie leads to more lies and so on and so on and before it is all over, we all learn a lesson we’ve been taught a million times and everybody is peachy keen by the end. Well, except for Frankie. He’s dead.
The extent of entertainment to this film is somewhat dependant on who you are. If you’re an adult, I am sure you will find a few things to giggle about and there is a chance you won’t doze off.
If you’re a child, you better hope you’re young enough to be able to appreciate the fact that there is some sort of “cartoon” up on that screen. Otherwise, most of the jokes will probably go over your head.
The story is as unoriginal as a Jessica Simpson album. Same old crap about how lies will get you somewhere at first, but will eventually lead to the possible consumption of your loved ones. Blah! Oh! And don’t forget, it’s okay to work at a car wash all your life!
The style of this film is about what one can expect from another animated feature that takes place in the big blue. Though not nearly as quaint or heart-wrenching as “Finding Nemo” you’ll be somewhat pleased by the amount of funk involved with “Shark Tale.”
For an animated film, the performances were quite exquisite. Yes, exquisite. Like caviar! This is probably Robert De Niro’s finest performance in recent years, which is a sad thing to say. But c’mon! He has picked some prime caca in the past few years. “Showtime?” “Godsend?” What are you thinking, Bob?
So there you have it. With another computer animated film up on the screen, and at least five more that I can think of on the top of my head on the way, it seems like this is a never-ending fad that is about as much of a fad as blue jeans. I’ll give you till next week to let that one soak into your skulls.
Eat more cheese!

Report Card:
Entertainment Value:     C
Story/Plot:                      D
Performances:                A
Artistic Style:                  B
Overall GPA:                  2.5