Growing up takes maturity

Like most of us who suddenly find ourselves facing this affliction called maturity, Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) has discovered a way to cope with his fears.

Unlike most of us, though, his method is to self-medicate with a pharmacy of prescription drugs.

Welcome to “Garden State,” the first film by “Scrubs” actor Zach Braff.

Braff, who not only directed but also wrote the film, opens with Andrew receiving a phone call from his father (Ian Holm) telling him that his mother has died. It’s been nine years since the part-time actor and waiter has visited home, and he can’t put his return off any longer.

Once home, he tiptoes around his father – who blames him for his mother’s death – and reconnects with his high school pals. One, Mark (Peter Sarsgaard), is even the gravedigger at Andrew’s mother’s funeral.

Gradually, Andrew emerges from the trance he has been in since he was a little boy. Since the day, in fact, that he pushed his mother down and caused her, accidentally, to become a paraplegic.

Part of his recovery comes from facing life without drugs. Part comes from realizing that as bad off as he might be, he’s progressed further than his friends, who are stuck doing the same old high school stuff.

But the biggest part may come from Andrew meeting Sam (Natalie Portman), a young woman whose obvious beauty is paired with an offbeat sensibility. Besides, she really, really likes him.

All of this fits in with writer-director Braff’s sense of mood. Some shots in “Garden State” are inventive and bizarre (such as Andrew’s all-in-white apartment), even though other sequences are just strange (the boat at the bottom of a quarry). But despite his film’s occasional lapses, Braff proves that he is more talented than his sitcom work would lead you to believe.

And the engaging Portman actually turns in a performance that shows she has more to offer than the sleepwalk job she does as Queen Amidala in the second film of the “Star Wars” trilogy.

All in all, “Garden State” is a fine little film. Give it a chance and it just may grow on you.

Just the way, even against your will, maturity tends to.