THE LAST KISS

by Kevin Koehler

Garden State is a nice enough film until the last twenty minutes or so, basically up to where Zach Braff et all visit the quarry and scream in the rain. At this time it becomes insufferable. Still, the picture is one hundred minutes long, so subtracting those final twenty still leaves a good eighty entertaining minutes of cinema - there are worse ways to spend an afternoon. Some critics compared Garden State to The Graduate; those critics should have their critic privileges revoked or at least placed on critic probation, no offense to Mr. Braff who is obviously talented and seems like a nice guy in interviews. Making a film that is 80% engaging and isn't comparable to The Graduate is no crime.

This being said, the current heavyweight champ of late-twenties ennui only stars in The Last Kiss - the credit/blame for directing goes to another multi-hyphenant, Tony Goldwyn, probably best known for playing the duplicitous best friend Carl Bruner in Ghost. He still acts quite a bit but has carved out a second career for himself helming television shows (The L Word, Grey's Anatomy) and movies (A Walk on the Moon) that are marketed predominantly towards the better sex. His last big screen gig was Someone Like You, which was awful in ways that aren't even interesting to talk about. Paul Haggis authored the screenplay for The Last Kiss, the same Paul Haggis who wrote and directed 2006 Oscar best picture-winning Crash (he also wrote the likewise overrated Million Dollar Baby). I imagine the same people who keep giving Haggis awards also compare Garden State to The Graduate.

In The Last Kiss, Braff plays Michael, an architect, one of those jobs people disproportionately have in movies but never seem to do in real life (except, you know, architects). Despite not being particularly attractive, rich, or a good conversationalist, he has a beautiful and intelligent (she is writing a dissertation, filmmaker code for brains) live-in girlfriend by the name of Jenna (Jacinda Barrett). She is also pregnant, spurring Michael to evaluate his feelings and undergo one of those crises of commitment that people are always having in movies.

At a wedding, undergrad Kim (Rachel Bilson) catches Michael's wandering eye. Though not quite as smart as Jenna, Kim does drink beer, which means she is pretty yet down to Earth (there's also a Green Day poster in her room, which probably serves much the same purpose). She pursues the conflicted but otherwise unremarkable Michael, for no discernible reason other than that is what pretty yet down to Earth college girls are always doing in movies.

Michael has an eclectic group of friends. They have names like Izzy and Kenny, hobbies like ice fishing, and one of them is a bartender but you probably already knew that. Izzy is obsessed with an ex-girlfriend who just ended their relationship; he breaks into her apartment early in the film, demanding that she look him in the eye and tell him she doesn't love him anymore as this is what people are always doing in movies. She doesn't love him anymore, so Izzy decides to buy a Winnebago and drive to South America, recruiting as many of friends to join him as possible. It's one of those comically random things that the eclectic group of friends people always have in movies are always doing in movies. Michael has a coworker, Chris (Casey Affleck, about the best thing this film has going for it), who has relationship troubles as well. He wants to leave his wife, inappropriating blurting it out at a staff meeting like people are always doing in movies. Michael's mother-in-law (Blythe Danner) also contemplates ending her marriage, still carrying a torch for a former lover played by Harold Ramis (she obviously has not seen Bedazzled).

There's some gay neighbors, too, but they don't do much besides offer a thristy Michael some sparkling water. Because gays don't drink ordinary water. They drink sparkling water. That's not important, though; what is important (and makes up the large proportion of the film's running time) is whether boring, unremarkable Michael will choose his beautiful and intelligent pregnant girlfriend Jenna or the beautiful yet down to Earth Kim who drinks beer. What attracts either to him is anyone's guess (at least in Garden State, Braff's character played a retarded quarterback on television). One expects some kind of surprise third act twist to explain Kim's arbitrary interest (perhaps she is writing her thesis on cloying men and infidelity) but it does not come. What we are left with is another banal story about commitment-phobic men and the women who want to trap them (even those women who are appear carefree and uninterested in monogamy as they are putting on the guise of disinterest to trap commitment-phobic men).

I won't reveal how the whole situation resolves itself, only that there is a musical montage featuring Coldplay, a lot of rain, Jacinda Barrett breaks character and speaks in an Australian accent (but no one seems to notice or care), and some other things happen that, well, are always happening in movies.

Interesting footnote: The Last Kiss is a remake of the Italian film L'ultimo baccio. That picture won a number of David awards (the Italian version of the Oscar), including one for it's director, Gabriele Muccino (he wrote the screenplay as well). It also garnered the 2002 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for World Cinema. Muccino recently helmed his first English language picture, the Will Smith starrer The Pursuit of Happyness.

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