Zach Braff, Jacinda Barrett, Rachel Bilson, Casey Affleck
Directed by Tony Goldwyn
Rated R
The Last Kiss is a study of relationships and marriages in various states of unrest. Based on the 2001 Italian film L’Utimo Bacio, this American version focuses on a set of childhood friends, men who seem to have everything together on the surface, but beneath they struggle with growing up and coming to terms with their lives to date.
When Michael’s (Braff) long-term girlfriend Jenna (Barrett) turns up pregnant, he goes through a “quarter life crisis,” trying to determine whether or not this is what he wants to do and be for the rest of his life. He knows that this girl has it all: the beauty, the brains, the love and the laughter, though still he struggles with the idea that this is it for him, that all life’s surprises have passed him by and the thrills are gone.
This leads him to the arms of college student Kim (Bilson), nearly a decade younger than he and very persuasive. He knows better, but still he falls into lies and deception so easily. And the excuses he purveys are absurd, as though he’s saying “I love you, honey, and I think I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but first I need to hook up with this hottie brunette . . . just to be sure.”
This is a ridiculous sentiment in a society already heavily laden with infidelity. Let’s all cry in our coffee because life doesn’t turn out in the fairy tale manner we all assumed in our idealistic youth. And as is typical of men, when life gets too serious, they cannot take the heat.
Movies like this OK it to always go for the fiery coed, the local donut baker, the seductive bartender, whatever . . . men are always looking to another woman because they haven’t the strength to look within for the solution, and movies like this only encourage such gutless behavior.
Maybe I’d feel a little more sympathy for the characters if they weren’t so poorly developed and stereotypical. Like when friend Kenny (Eric Christian Olson) finds the girl of his dreams (at least sexually), he praises her and dotes on her, until she wants to introduce her to the parents and he goes running. Literally.
He runs out of her house and straight to the bar. These are supposed to be grown men approaching 30 and they behave worse than the boys of some National Lampoon’s movies.
Even Affleck’s Chris, who is trapped in marital misery since the birth of his son, is hard to comprehend. His only complaint seems to be that his wife nags too much, as though motherhood is not a demanding task, especially all alone while hubby’s out with the boys.
I’ve come to expect so much more from screenwriter Paul Haggis, whose previous film work (Crash, Million Dollar Baby) far exceeds archetypical Hollywood fare, but he is a man and this movie, for as much as the PR machine wants to tout it as a romantic date movie, is a movie for men.
The performances are mediocre and the storyline is flaccid. There’s nothing outstanding about this film, save Michael Penn’s score which does a better job of telling the story than the script.
If you’re expecting something as moving and poignant as Garden State, don’t stop here.
