Garden Party

Los Angeles is a city of transplants, every person arriving with a dream that is eventually shown to be an illusion in the harsh light of city's reality. GARDEN PARTY weaves this theme beautifully with an ensemble cast of up-and-comers.

The film introduces each character as a classic archetype - the runaway teen, the frustrated artist, the demanding successful boss, the aspiring musician, the dead-end job dreamer - but the film then spends its time delving deep into the personalities behind these stereotypes, revealing them all as individuals as it entangles them in various plots that flirt with destruction but offer redemption. Along the way there is porn, pot, homelessness, backstabbing, tools from the entertainment industry, superficiality, revenge ... and love!

As a native Angeleno, what struck me most was how this film captures the mundane, day-to- day existence of Los Angeles with every hint of glamor and Utopian paradise removed from the stark cityscape. What GARDEN PARTY delivers is an accurate and memorable vision of the city of Angels being a landscape of personalities, each with a dream, some with a dark side and most with a sympathetic humanity underneath it all.

Here are some stories and you just observe them from start to finish without anything interesting happening. Surprisingly there are a lot of enjoyable bits somewhere between, but ultimately it's really not worth watching.

I have a habit of liking movies with low production value due to their craptasticness.

There is nothing about this movie that is good except for the fact that it tries so hard with its worn out stereotypes and shoestring budget. The movie doesn't portray reality or LA at all. Yet, in all its cheesiness, I found myself smiling. The scenes with Ross Patterson as Joey Zane are really funny. He's trying so hard and it shows.

The movie itself goes nowhere and ends where it starts: without any crescendo or plot succession. I guess these people are older and perhaps wiser, but I doubt it.

I give this movie a 7 for its bad dialogue, tired portrayals of artists, and quotes like, "I don't go to school. I'm a musician." If you like cheese and have a couple minutes to waste, this may be the movie for you.

Yeah, one reason why I bought it: that squirrel-cute girl from THE O.C., Kaitlyn Cooper, I hadda see more of her. Oh, I mean that without any innuendo, I found out beforehand that despite the movie's controversial theme, there was no nudity involved for "my little heroine", and for those of you who saw her bare back, remember, that is all you saw, that was all done from a certain angle.

But, getting back to the movie itself, the general consensus here on IMDb is of an under-performer, a disappointment, a wasted effort, and I have to agree, but only in part. The movie is by no means bad, it just lacks proper direction, meandering like lost little rivulets finally converging, but by then, you're fed up already with the scene changing to some other characters just as you finally get into watching.

From my own viewpoint, I only wanted the April story-line, so you can imagine how much that little homeless half-Oriental dude's singing got into my way.

You also cannot take the characters seriously. A little thing it might be, but in this day and age, would a young professional like Sally St. Claire step into gum with her high heels (ooh eek! horrors! a piece of gum! ooh help!) and then stand there offering her leg to a motorcyclist so that he could remove her shoe, cradling her bare foot, and wipe off the offending wad? It is also never explained whether that guy was stalking his dream girl from ten years before. Oh, well, such coincidences might happen in Hollywood, of course.

And, hey, as for Sally, everybody here makes her sound like Evil Incarnate. Business lady who smooths her way with little pot samples. Expects 24/7 assistance, but supplies a place to live + a car. Not her fault her intern dances with another man and gets lured into a toilet.

An empty movie, true enough.

Okay, it's named after the song, but YOUNG AND CONFUSED would have been a better, more descriptive, name for this picture.

Well, it's my first comment here on IMDb, but since this movie only had two comments before mine, one of them rating it perfect and the other one below average, I thought mine would make sense.

First of, I really liked the semi slow-flowing pace this film had. It kept me entertained the whole way through, and I was excited to see what happened next.

Eash characters little story holds dilemmas, and situations we can understand and relate to. While the storyline isn't heading anywhere in particular, it takes you through a short period of time in the character's life. I like this style, and when this is done well, I find I don't long for a big climaxes, or an ending where everything comes together.

Sadly there is a lack of depth in the characters. The stereotype characters work very well, but we aren't allowed to look much further below the surface. The perspective is always from the outside as a spectator, which makes the few reactions and emotions seem pretty superficial and hollow.

This movie could have been much more! A bit more manuscript development, and it would have been up there.

So all in all: This is not a masterpiece, and not a movie I will remember, but a good hour and a half's entertainment well worth watching.