ASK ANYONE not from New Jersey what they know about the state, and you’re bound to hear of the Sopranos, the Turnpike (what exit?), and pollution. Listen to anyone from New Jersey and you will hear the same response: There’s more to it than that. Why, there are the over one million acres of natural wildlife known as the Pine Barrens. And there’s all the produce, from cranberries to tomatoes to corn, supplying much of the northeast–after all, it isn’t called the Garden State for nothing. You may get a few nods and probably some looks of skepticism. But what would truly bolster this case is a fresh cinematic perspective, one that doesn’t involve organized crime or bleak highway vistas.

Enter the film Garden State, where there isn’t a single shopping mall in sight. Not one scene takes place at a diner around 4:00 A.M. There are no bodies stuffed in trunks and no one looking like they came straight from a Sopranos casting call. Nobody ever says, “How you doin’?” Rather, Garden State follows struggling actor Andrew Largeman (a truly impressive performance by Zach Braff, also the film’s writer and director) who must return home to New Jersey for his mother’s funeral. Largeman lives in Los Angeles, and it is telling that the few memorable scenes we see here take place in a sterile bedroom, an obnoxious Vietnamese eatery where Largeman suffers insults as a waiter, and on the traffic-congested freeway. In stark contrast, when he arrives in New Jersey, we are immediately greeted by lush green landscapes (albeit in a Jewish cemetery), tranquil scenes in quaint suburban neighborhoods, and a collection of colorful characters with definite flaws, but almost all of them sympathetic (compared with the detestable and artificial clientele at the L.A. restaurant).