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| Last Kiss, The |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 105 |
| Public Rating: 8.88 (16 votes) |
Director: Tony Goldwyn |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Comedy/Drama |
Year: 2006 |
| Writer(s): Paul Haggis (adaptation), Gabriele Muccino (screenplay, "L'ultimo bacio") |
| Distributor: DreamWorks Pictures |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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The Last Kiss, a remake of Gabriele Muccino's Italian comedy-drama, "L'ultimo bacio," adapted by Oscar winning screenwriter Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby and directed by Tony Goldwyn, examines the usual conflicts, fears, and anxieties that occur when the C-word (“commitment”) becomes a topic of active discussion in a romantic relationship. Forward (to marriage) or backward (to becoming single again), solidifying where a relationship is headed is fraught with many difficulties. Everyone's gone through them (well, almost everyone). That almost universal experience, if handled with honesty, is ripe for exploration via the medium of film.
Three years into a monogamous relationship, Michael (Zach Braff) and Jenna's (Jacinda Barrett) world is about to change. She's pregnant. Although they live together, they haven't taken their relationship to the next logical step, marriage. Michael thinks he has everything, a fulfilling career (he's an architect), a loving girlfriend, supportive friends, and now, a baby on the way. It's also all too much for the about-to-turn-30 Michael. Likewise with Michael's closest male friends, Kenny (Eric Christian Olsen), a hedonistically inclined bartender, Chris (Casey Affleck), whose marriage to Lisa (Lauren Lee Smith) is faltering, and Izzy (Michael Weston), whose girlfriend has just left him. Although she has anxieties of her own, Jenna faces the pregnancy with a more accepting approach, looking to her parents, Anna (Blythe Danner) and Stephen (Tom Wilkinson), as what she wants to accomplish in her relationship with Michael.
Michael's doubts about long-term commitment surface at a wedding when he meets Kim (Rachel Bilson), an attractive college student. Kim moves in on the older Michael. Flattered by Kim's attention, Michael's doubts about his relationship with Jenna intensify. Michael decides to keep his options with Kim open. As Michael's relationship with Jenna falters under the strain of the C-word, the possibility of a fling with Kim looks increasingly attractive. She might just be the last woman (besides Jenna) that Michael spends time with romantically. Jenna's opinions of her parent's marriage, however, may be wrong, as long-suppressed issues begin to surface, threatening Anna and Stephen's relationship.
Director Tony Goldwyn (Someone Like You..., A Walk on the Moon), an actor himself, gets solid performance from a mostly experienced cast, especially Blythe Danner and Tom Wilkinson. Their scenes together are as raw and honest as they come. We not only believe they've been married for thirty years, but end up feeling sympathetic for their disparate positions. It's a pity we don't spend more time with them, but then The Last Kiss would have been an entirely different film. As Michael, Zach Braff acquits himself well. He's better at playing laconic, low-key characters, which he generally does here, but there are one or two instances in The Last Kiss where he has to push his emoting to the upper range (and it feels forced).
Jacinda Barrett and Rachel Bilson are given respective scenes to shine in (more so with Barrett, but she has the larger role). In her last scene, Bilson manages to make her character incredibly sympathetic (no mean feat, considering Kim's aware that Michael is in a relationship). Casey Affleck (Ben's younger brother) continues his string of idiosyncratic performances. As the conflicted Chris, Affleck doesn't necessarily give a “bad” performance, just one that seems ill fitting within the range of performances in The Last Kiss.
The Last Kiss certainly has its share of flaws. With everyone in relationship-crisis mode, the main storyline and various subplots could have easily filled several films (or a much longer version of The Last Kiss). That means that Michael's friends and their respective character arcs are given minimal screen time. Izzy and Chris suffer the most. The Izzy character functions mostly as comic relief, but it's Chris' story arc that ends up feeling truncated, his eventual transformation into a caring, sensitive father is less-than-unconvincing. More likely than not, the subplots were trimmed to keep the focus on Michael and Jenna. That's all good, but perhaps trimming the number of close friends (from three to two) Michael has would have helped.
Haggis' script has to balance sympathy for Michael's dilemma with the obvious hurtful consequences his actions have on the trusting Jenna (after all, for him to spend time with Kim means he's openly lying to Jenna). He doesn't quite succeed. It's also too neat, too symmetrical. Everyone, including Jenna's parents, is facing relationship-based crises in their personal lives. Each subplot is meant to show a different facet or side to relationships, crumbling marriages, hedonistic, commitment-free lifestyles, and full-on rejection, which , to be fair, helps to crystallize Michael's fears and anxieties. It still ends up making the characters seem self-centered. Chris isn't particularly sympathetic, Izzy is clueless, and Michael is so wrapped up in figuring out his personal life that he barely pays attention to what's going on in Izzy or Chris' life.
Still, solid performances, minus one or two overplayed scenes, plus Haggis' usually crisp, incisive dialogue (again, with a minor exception), and some thought-provoking material along the way toward Michael's hard-won realizations about relationships and commitment make The Last Kiss worth seeing, albeit with some reservations. One last note: The Last Kiss may be misnamed. Considering where Michael ends, the title seems like a cheat, a play toward making us sympathetic to Michael's dilemma before we actually see The Last Kiss. And just because The Last Kiss is a literal translation of the original film's title in Italian doesn't make it right (or more accurate).
© Mel Valentin, 15th September, 2006
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