Review Detail

February 22, 2011

Well, I think I need to preface this by saying that I HATED Garden State when I saw it in theaters. Like, seriously despised. And I honestly don’t remember much about it. I remember thinking it came off very pretentious, very “quirky for the sake of it,” and very “I wish I was made by Wes Anderson but I wasn’t.” It was trying to be Indy and charming, which made it feel the opposite.

I love L8wrtr’s edits, and again I didn’t remember a whole lot of the original, so I decided to give this a whirl.

I’m glad I did.

As far as Technical goes, everything is well done. I don’t remember what songs L8 changed, but I didn’t notice any of them. There is a pretty noticeable quality drop from some of the deleted scenes, but I personally found them crucial additions, so that can be dealt with. All other editing is flawless and unnoticeable.

Now as far as the concept, I thought this was made into a real movie. The plot doesn’t feel as meandering and nonexistant as it did in the original, and I can really feel the emotion of Large’s arc (see what I did there?) as the story progressive. The quirkiness becomes sweet instead of overwhelming. The story moves at a nice pace and there’s plenty of hysterical moments throughout. The love story is believable and enjoyable and all of the actors get to shine. Generally, I feel like if I had seen this in the theater, I would not have felt anywhere near as harshly, and might have even liked it. Luckily, I have this version to like now.

Basically, I feel that L8wrtr has taken a really, really craptastic movie and made it worthwhile. I highly recommend this edit!