In “Garden State,” Andrew seems to have been running from his hometown. When he returns for the funeral, everyone points out that he got out of New Jersey as soon as he graduated and never looked back. Some clearly feel abandoned, while others joke about his minimal Hollywood success. What they don’t know is that he’s working in a weird, racist Vietnamese restaurant where the servers all dress in stereotypical clothing and wear eyeliner, and that he’s deeply, horribly depressed. 

His father (Ian Holm) is a psychiatrist who has served as Andrew’s shrink since he was a child, and he keeps his son heavily medicated to the point that he feels almost nothing. It turns out that Andrew’s fears of home result from childhood trauma: when he was nine and having an argument with his mother, he pushed her and in a freak accident she fell and was paralyzed. He clearly blames himself and that’s why he ran as far away as he could, but once she’s dead he realizes there was so much left unsaid. 

Most of the movie is Andrew having small, weird adventures around his New Jersey hometown. There’s a funeral for Sam’s hamster, an elaborate hunt for some Desert Storm trading cards that ends at a houseboat in the bottom of a rock quarry, and a whole lot of quirky shenanigans. The cinematography by Lawrence Shur (“Joker”) is top-notch, giving the movie a slightly surreal, magical realism quality that helps make it more of a whimsical journey than just an angsty man’s random wanderings. Braff’s direction is good, steered by his connection to the work, and his performance is his standard schtick: he’s a sad boy in a sad world who doesn’t know how to handle it. 

Thankfully, Portman is perfect as Sam, bringing pathos to her manic pixie character and injecting her with a bit of depth absent in Braff’s script. Peter Sarsgaard is equally great as Andrew’s old high school buddy, Mark, who digs graves for a living and has the kind of life Andrew was terrified he would have been stuck in if he had never left New Jersey. There are a few weird moments that don’t quite hold up, like Sam’s “adopted” brother Titembay or the aforementioned Vietnamese restaurant, though these can be attributed to Braff’s privileged, limited view of the world. 

While “Garden State” does a lot of emotional digging, it’s also very funny in a dry, sideways kind of way. Many of the film’s biggest gags come from absurd situations, like Andrew waking up the morning after a house party to see a knight in full armor pouring himself a bowl of cereal. Life is weird, and “Garden State” embraces that weird for laughs. This is a movie where Method Man plays a hotel bellhop who hosts secret peep shows to watch the rich and famous have sex in their rooms, then demands that everyone who “saw some t***ys” raise their hand. Denis O’ Hare is a “guardian of the abyss” who lives in a houseboat with his wife and son at the bottom of a quarry and serves anyone who comes by tea. Just roll with it.