Garden State / YMMV

Awesome Music: The film's soundtrack, consisting of songs handpicked by Braff, has grown arguably as popular as the film itself. It sold over 1 million copies, won a Grammy Award^note, provided a breakthrough for the then-otherwise-obscure indie band The Shins, and has since been considered a perfect capsule of early-to-mid-2000s indie music by many.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: A particularly jarring one occurs when Andrew sees Mark stealing jewelry from a casket while they're hanging out at the cemetery. Andrew barely reacts, Jesse doesn't notice (or care), and Mark never faces any consequences.
- Alternatively, this is a Chekhov's Gun for their Wild goose chase at the end of the movie.
Condemned by History: Much like American Beauty, the film was widely acclaimed and beloved when it came out in 2004 (even reaching 393 on Empire's 500 Greatest Movies of All Time), but opinions of it quickly soured over time, with many viewers now actually embarrassed to admit they loved the movie in the first place. New criticisms of the movie include viewing the protagonist as whiny, unsympathetic, and dull; the handling of its themes as flawed and even pretentious (especially with increasingly nuanced and sensitive portrayals of mental health in The New '10s); and Sam being a one-dimensional (and, to some, annoying) Manic Pixie Dream Girl character. The primary thing most people can agree stood the test of time was the soundtrack.
Cult Classic: One of the definitive indie movies of the 2000s, with a small but incredibly devoted fanbase to boot.
Fridge Brilliance: Sam's house is a bit of a mess, but you still wonder why there are spots all over the TV, until you realize that Tetembe was dusting for fingerprints moments earlier.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: Sam claiming that listening to The Shins will "change your life" becomes this when one realizes how the movie brought the band into the spotlight for quite some time, doubling the amount of their albums sold and even allowing them to extend their tour.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Jim Parsons plays a young lover of Mark's mother, who shows off by speaking Klingon, a full two years before his casting as Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory.
- This wouldn't be the last film where Natalie Portman and Peter Sarsgaard would star in the same film together.
It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: How many people nowadays will admit they loved this movie when it first came out? Not many. But they did.
Memetic Mutation: The "New Slang" scene gained a bit of a following with people swapping out Sam's "life-changing" song for something more absurd.
Never Live It Down: Since its release, the movie is most known for having one of the most unapologetic uses of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope in movie history. Every discussion of the trope brings up Sam from this movie at some point.
Signature Scene:
- As mentioned above in Memetic Mutation, the "New Slang" scene.
- Andrew's shirt blending into the wallpaper behind him became one of the most famous images from the film.
- The scene of Andrew, Sam, and Mark screaming into the abyss, even being used on the poster.
So Okay, It's Average: Those who aren't embarrassed to admit their love for the movie when it was initially released now tend to view it as an okay film at best.
Spiritual Successor: If Garden State went one state over, it would be called Adventureland.

YMMV / Garden State

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