People recall Garden State’s sins more readily than its virtues, which strikes me as unfair: At the time, it was a stylishly crafted comedy drama with a genuine interest in small emotional moments. The flip side, of course, is that white malaise is never as profound as white people seem to think it is, and also the whole manic pixie dream girl thing. So a mixed bag, certainly. I mention all this because when I tell you that The Hollars is Garden State: 2016 Edition, I don’t want you to think I’m dismissing it entirely. There’s simply no other way to describe a movie in which a big city sad boy returns to his hometown in the wake of a family tragedy only to discover—well, you know the drill. What’s changed in the intervening years is an emphasis on giving the female characters actual inner lives and stuff to do. Which is nice! But this is still a film where Anna Kendrick designs dog clothes and John Krasinski falls off a symbolic tire swing. All that’s missing is a Shins song. by Ben Coleman