Late movie review - Garden State

I thought Zach Braffs' Garden State from 2004 had received mostly good reviews, and checking back on Rottentomatoes, I see I was right.

This article at Vulture, however, says by 2013 it had became popular to dislike it (although the writer then goes on to defend it.)

I thought it started promising, but lost me at about two thirds of the way through.   I kept having a problem with the character Mark - he's a real loser, and criminal, yet the Zack Braff character keeps hanging around with him.  I think I was particularly lost with the visit to the peeping tom motel - it looked completely unrealistic, felt tonally wrong, and it was quickly followed by the waaay too obvious "screaming into the infinite abyss" scene at the giant hole in the ground.  By this point, the movie became not just quirky, but trying far too hard to be quirky for quirks sake. 

The disclosure of the source of the main character's problems with emotions did not have much emotional impact.  And the ending was OK (I was touched by Natalie Portman's acting, actually), but it still felt a bit underwhelming.

Nice try, Zach, but I thought it felt like a movie that hadn't received other writers' input that it needed.