NEW JERSEY GENERALLY gets a bum rap on-screen, with its landscapes filmed like broken-dream suburban boulevards and its populace portrayed as working-class yahoos determined to flatten their vowels into submission. Mock it if you must, but "Joisey" did give us Sinatra, Springsteen, Grover Cleveland, and Andrew "Large" Largeman (Zach Braff), the numbed-out hero of Garden State, which could be an instant quirk classic. Aspiring actor Largeman is living in Los Angeles and table-jockeying in a chic Vietnamese restaurant when the call comes that his mother has died. He reluctantly returns home for a few days of closure. Hanging out with his boyhood pal (Peter Sarsgaard) – now a full-time stoner grave digger – and a goofy young woman (Natalie Portman) he meets in a neurologist's waiting room, Large searches for the epiphany that'll ease him out of his vegetative mind-set. At first glance, Garden State may seem like just another twentysomething woe-is-me mopefest looking to ride Holden Caulfield's coattails. But thanks to writer-director-star Braff's knack for deliciously deadpan setups, the film works an alchemy of bemused charm that steamrolls over most of the story's clunks. There are a few neophyte missteps, notably in the faux-naif lines poor Portman has to pop out (still, it surely beats acting against droids) and Large's slightly stock climactic confessional with dad Ian Holm, but Braff nails the mixture of melancholia and absurdism so beautifully that it's hard not to be won over. Comparisons to The Graduate seem inevitable, but Garden State is fruitful enough to avoid the usual match game. (David Fear)