Garden Party (2008)

Overrated and overhyped

Lack of good storyline.

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

I will also compare this with Crash, but in a positive way. Crash touched a lot of real issues, but had really crappy characters. Garden Party is not so much focused on a cohesive story, but has interesting protagonists. Also, I have to say that I believe the message to be slightly different. While Crash was about people touching other people's lives and actions having consequences, Garden Party is more about the transience of any relationship and the insignificance of its characters.Indeed, I believe the story of this film was not about the people in it as much as it was about how interesting people can make a story interesting when the underlying mechanism doesn't care about or need any of them. Or maybe it was just the mood I was in. This film presents actions like prostitution, posing for sexy pictures, selling drugs and even kidnapping and battery as normal things that people do randomly to reach their goals and live their dreams.Unless, of course, I just found Vinessa Shaw gorgeous and I am rating this high because I be horny.

The teenager April (Willa Holland) arrives in Los Angeles expecting to find a job and she stays at her lesbian cousin's home. Sammy (Erik Scott Smith) is a talented homeless singer, musician and composer that meets a guy that offers an opportunity to him to become a pop star. Nathan (Alex Cendese) is a young gay that has come to Los Angeles expecting to be a dancer but works as secretary of the real state agent Sally St. Claire (Vinessa Shaw). Todd (Richard Gunn) is an artist that neglects his girlfriend and spends most of his time in porn sites. Their lives are entwined when the pornographer Anthony (Patrick Fischler) meets Nathan and April in a bar and he offers two-thousand dollars to take nude pictures of them. Nathan befriends Sammy on the street. Sally hires April to work in her office with Nathan. And Sally dates Todd and finds that there are pictures of her in Internet."Garden Party" is a film with enjoyable but pointless stories in LA. The characters are likable but the neither the characters and nor the situations are well developed. The one-dimensional characters are shallow and the story goes nowhere. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): Not Available

I saw this movie basically because I think that Willa Holland is an incredibly lovely young model/actress. I won't give away too much of the plot except to say this is a rip off of P.T. Anderson, Brett Easton Ellis, Mulholland Dr and throw in The OC just because the filmmakers have little imagination an originality of their own. I mean there's not much to give away there aren't any big plot twists. It just occurred to me that if Mystery Science Theater 3000 were still around this would be the perfect movie for them to goof on. This film is about a group of people living in Los Angeles, some of them prostitute themselves, others sell real estate an marijuana, some are musicians and some do nothing. I mean this movie is hilariously bad at times, one of the characters is suppose to be an amazing badass rocker and he makes the Jonas brothers look cool. So like I said in my summary kind of a typical bad straight to video movie, weak acting, direction, cinematography etc. What really gave this movie character is the bad script, it's just so laughable it almost and I repeat almost makes this entertaining in a bad way. It's funny to think that the lead actress worked with Stanley Kubrick and Vinessa Shaw is a good actress, when given the right material. Willa Holland is cute but I can see her doing many more movies like this. Probably the best thing about this confusing movie was the genuinely funny agent, sure the guy is just ripping off Dane Cook and Jeremy Piven but it's not like those two are Deniro or Jim Carrey for that matter. See this movie if you're with some friends and you want to make your own Mystery Science Theater 3000.

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.