10 Movie Titles With Double Meanings Everyone Missed
8. Garden State
Garden State is a strange movie, one which toys with existential exploration of loneliness before setting for a stock romcom vibe from around halfway through. It’s one of those movies which claims to be meaningful without really meaning anything, not unlike Stuck In Love or Somewhere.
It’s a good movie, just not as good as it might have been; something you could say for most of Zac Braff’s career, discounting Scrubs.
The title is, on the face of it, quite simple. The movie is set in New Jersey. New Jersey is known as the Garden State. Hence, the movie is called Garden State. It would be like calling a movie set in Florida ‘The Panhandle’.
Except there actually is something going under the surface. Andrew Largeman, Braff’s character, is at quite a transitional time in his life. He’s ready to grow into someone new, and put down roots if need be.
He is metaphorically in a garden state of mind, as well as being quite literally in the Garden State of America: New Jersey. With the surface meaning seeming so clear cut, the potential double meaning here passed many people by.