If when you first see Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff)
sitting stupefied in an airplane that’s about to crash, you might
experience déjà vu: isn't this the stony face of the young Dustin Hoffman
in “The Graduate”? Andrew Largeman—“Large” to his friends—is a latter-day
Benjamin Braddock, a lost soul distanced from his parents and school
friends, and without a clue as to what to do with his life. The screenplay, written by Braff, is a marvel,
blending the themes of literal burial (Large is home from L.A.
to be at his mother’s funeral), and the burial of emotions.
Not only Large’s emotions, but his father’s and his
friends’, most of whom are stoned on drugs of one kind or another.
Large himself has been on prescription drugs—prescribed by his
psychiatrist father (Ian Holm)—since the age of nine when in a rage he
pushed his mother and she fell and was paralyzed from the neck down.
Now fifteen years later he returns from Los Angeles to his native
state, a sort of celebrity in that he played a retarded athlete in a
made-for TV movie. He was so good in the role that a young woman
asks him if he really isn't retarded. A good question actually. After seeing Large
walking the streets of his hometown, you might ask the same question. The woman asking the question will become the
unlikely impetus for Large's extrication from his pharmaceutically
induced stupor. Her name is Sam (Nathalie Portman) and if anything
she’s as vulnerable as Large. To
illustrate, she lies regularly, and her off-the-wall family has a thing
about pets who just happen to die with unnerving regularity.
Of course they must be buried, and it’s the burial of a pet
gerbil that brings Large and Sam closer. While this may sound crazy and disquieting, it’s
also tender and sweet. And
it rings true, at least for me. If
you remember, at the end of “The Graduate” Benjamin has rescued
Elaine from a rebound marriage; our last look at them is a two-shot in
which they both appear numbed.
Since they have not learned to take one another seriously, I
hold out little hope for them. The
ending of “ Rated R for strong language and sexual situations. Visit IMDb
for details about the movie. 
a quick take by Tony McRae