The only genuinely good thing about his dumb movie was the soundtrack.
The movie itself was like a teenager proclaiming how deep they are to their fellow teenagers, which is why it doesn't hold up well in parts.
My password is password.

I don't think it aged poorly…whatever flaws it had were apparent when it released and still are now, but I don't think any of it has to do with age. The only exception is in the 2010's-2020's it became very fashionable to dissect and criticize the "manic pixie dream girl" trope among feminist publications, a trope which is often first attributed to this film…but I always found that criticism to be kind of flimsy. The film has plenty of flaws but I think it was overall a good watch.
Cast In The Name Of God…Ye Not Guilty

Guess that's what makes the difference between 'classic' and 'great' movies

I'm not sure what you mean by "aged well"? Does it have wrinkles and pock marks in some spots? Does the audio or scenery drop out at certain points?
Anyways, when I first saw this film I immediately figured out that Large's dilemma was his dependency of medication to shield him from a tragic accident we later learned happened between him and his mother, whose funeral spurned his return to NJ for the funeral, and that at the end he realized that he never needed to be on meds in the first place. I guess if you grew up with similar circumstances you identify more with this movie, but the quirkiness and surreal scenes Braff inserts into various parts of the film are all part of his drug-addled mind reconfiguring events as they fold out before him.
Case in point, it's probably not true that his close friend became a multi-millionaire for inventing "silent" velcro, and his close buddy (Sarsgaard) didn't really take him on that wild goose chase to find his "gift". It was all part of his mind's psychosis in dealing with everyday realities of old friends in New Jersey. All the while he was in Hollywood playing characters outside of his own reality. He was living a double dosage of artificiality and at the end he decides to stay back home detox with Natalie Portman. I would too.

Quirky movies like these never age well. I don't think it was ever fresh to begin with, just an easy film to pass the time.

This reply though. I'm 23 and I thought this movie is pretty decent. After reading your post it hit me, some movies aren't gonna be as good when I rewatch them in my 30's. I never really thought about stuff like that till just now.

I saw it when I was 17 and thought it was cliched and cheesy.

I am 33 now and I've seen it for the first time, I just loved it. Now I'm sure: I have the mind of a teenager, I'm not sure I'll ever grow up

When I was a teenager in the late 90s, I thought "The Breakfast Club" was the greatest film ever made. I'm 34 now. I still like it, but it's just not the same.

@starseed062
This. You just put into words everything I was thinking.

I'm thinking the real problem is not that it hasn't aged, but that you have. I saw this when it came out at 21 and I loved it. But watching it again just now, at 33, it just fell flat. The way you see the world at 21 just isn't the same as the way you see the world at 33. Things that used to be so important, just aren't.

I think that was just supposed to serve to highlight the quirkiness of Sam and her family. They explain it well enough as he is only a very minor character. He was able to find them as they were donors to him as a child and her mother offered to let him stay with them, then he enrolled in college…(probabaly Rutgers?) studying criminal law or forensics, I forget exactly. It was just another weird scenario of their family dynamic, didn't require much more exposition than that.
Cast In The Name Of God…Ye Not Guilty

Not sure what you mean by "huge" - it only earned about 25 million at the box office. It had it's moments, but had some gaps in the logic area. For example, that guy who casually tells Zach Braff that he was originally an impoverished African child, but is now a law student in New Jersey. That is such a big leap to take, and it's never explained how he did.

It was huge a decade ago, but people rarely talk about it anymore. Maybe it spoke to youth in the mid-2000s, but seems irrelevant to millennials.

Garden State's message I guess is about being 'real' and 'deep' and 'true', so the scenes that are actually a little superficial seem to stand out more to me now than when I saw the movie when it first came out. But tbh those scenes are few, and thankfully most of the movie still stands up well. Garden State is Pivotal in the coming of age genre
P.S. Natalie Portman is a Goddess

It has not aged well at all. It's at best a mediocre film. Apparently not many people saw it because there are so few threads here on the message board.
Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar, and / or doesn't.

What does that even mean?
Whatever it means, the movie looks to me like it could've been made yesterday. Well, except that it would be one of the better movies made in awhile if it was that new.

Natalie Portman did a great job for what she was given to work with. I really like her as an actor.
But her character in GS was very quirky - but NOT in good way - but rather in a immature 14 to 16 years old way. This made Braff came off as being a 29 year old semi-creepy dude that was wanted to hang out with a girl who acted (and basically looked) 13 years younger then him.
Oh, and he was learning important lessons from her too. Uh-huh. I was waiting for her to break out the barbie dolls in the bedroom scene, it was so over-the-top.
Even his "drug induced semi-coma" (that was never believable anyway) didn't make up for this weak, silly plot.

Natalie Portman is adorable in any era.

The sun is shining but the ice is slippery.