review of the movie quitting:
*disclaimer to clay and class: this is totally just my opinion. i realize some may have liked this movie a lot; if so, please realize i'm just sharing my thoughts and views cause i have a personal interest in movies of this genre. since i am about to play critic, i will be "critical" and unkind PUPORTEDLY so read on only if you have a strong gut or disliked parts of the movie

the movie that quitting reminded me of personally was garden state. i hesitate when i say this, but i'm just saying the flavor of the movie genres seems similar; (i hesistate b/c garden state is virtually flawless and few movies can compare to it). other movies that are less, but somewhat related and garden-state level, are movies like eternal sunshine and lost in translation.
all these movies share the same general theme: losing your way. in eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, jim carrey finds himself depressed and lost in life, and it is not until the end that he realizes the true meaning of a relationship ( i won't spoil it). in lost in translation, scarlett johannsen, in the pit of regret and dullness, finds bill murray who helps her find her way back through the love of a sincere friendship that revolves around caring, not lust.

garden state opens with a main character that sees the world in black and white. even parties are meaningless, whereas it is just temporal sin-ish fun. nothing is real, that is, until he meets someone special, who slowly changes his world back into one of "color"; he slowly stops taking the drugs his parents made him take. he hates his dad, and their relationship is horrible, until the end when he tries to fix it. because of this special person, he slowly develops emotions, until finally, he acts like a normal person (in the beginning, he spends a lot of time just dazing into nothing with pale expressions). if you haven't seen this movie, i highly recommend it, and thus, will not spoil what this "special" relationship is. besides, its more than words can describe. >]

garden state was a better movie than quitting because it focussed more on the "rebirth" rather than the fall. quitting felt like i was like THe Passion of the Christ; just a bunch of tortuous whips and screams. and then the movie ends with little to reflect over. the movie chose to reflect on the parents' unconditional love for the child, which i admit is a good theme. but realism? GOOD GOD. parents do that?! DO THEY REALLY? yes we probably do have good parents, but some parts of the movie are unbelievable. i cannot in any sense imagine a father (ESPECIALLY ASIAN) act in that way. asian fathers are stern and if their child acts like a delinquent, they'd probably ostracize the kid from the family. the way in which the father was so victimized and docile (an innocent victim of his super-evil son) seemed to STRETCH the believability of the story. let me just say , parents like that are quite the bargain, but they simply do not EXIST. i laughed when the father put on the tight jeans for his son; honestly. the theme was clear in quitting: the good parents saved the child in the end through persistence. but the "rebirth" of the main character was incomplete and not very satisfying especially compared to the level of garden state. garden state focussed almost extensively on the rebirth THROUGHOUT instead of like the last 10 minutes in quitting; also, the parents were "saved" by the child, not the other way around (something much more believable if you think about it). also at the end, the main character finds inner peace and learns a lesson not to be forgotten. in quitting, as mentioned before, it was more of a The Passion of the Christ feel. so a guy gets tortured mercilessly through horrifiic depression and hurts his poor parents; this INSPIRES SYMPATHY, not a good movie. in the end of the movie, his rebirth is this:
he reflects in a mental institution and thinks "hm....maybe i should be serious.. i don't wnat to spend the rest of my life here". and thats about it. he thens goes home and there seems to be hope in the family. so the message? if your kid is messed up, send him to an asylum and he'll come out better. in other words, the guy NEVER goes through self realization of maturation. he's still immature at the end of the film. his character depth seemed null; it was like you were looking at a 6 year old through a 30 year old body, even at the end of the movie. the character, thus , never grew, which left an unsatisfying ending which would only hold if the audience would buy the believability of the self-sacrificing parents, which i personally, did not.
~in other words, in my opinion, garden state is a better movie in this genre.