Garden State

He might have won fame through playing JD on Scrubs, but Zach Braff's directorial debut, which he also wrote and stars in, indicates that he won't be overly reliant on the day job in the future. A self-conscious yet emotionally astute coming of age romantic drama, Garden State sees Braff playing Andrew Largeman, an LA-based, clinically depressed jobbing actor whose big break never materialised after he played a mentally handicapped kid in a TV movie. Having not been home in almost a decade, Largeman returns to Jersey for his mother's funeral and to confront his father without his anti-depressants, which he accidentally left at home in LA. Although his father (an underused Ian Holm) seems to quietly blame him for his wife's demise, Largeman decides to hang around for a couple of days, his interest in his home town awakened by the antics of his former best friends, marshalled by the excellent Peter Sarsgaard, and an oddball woman (Natalie Portman) he encounters in a doctor's waiting room...

Although it occasionally veers towards quirkiness for quirkiness' sake, Garden State is a fragile, whimsical and entertaining coming of age comedy drama. Braff's themes are eternal ones - the notion of stability (mental or otherwise) and finding one's own place in the world - but his passion is palpable, while his offbeat humour usually works. Garden State is not a perfect movie - its off-kilter tone feels more contrived as the film progresses and the ending is too pat - but the 29-year-old Braff appears to have a bright career ahead of him. Even without Scrubs.