Oh no. Not another movie with affluent Americans complaining about their lot in life. The Last Kiss, surprisingly scripted by Crash screenwriter Paul Haggis, is an unpleasant trawl through the modern relationship with unfortunate echoes of similar whining in The Break Up. Unencumbered by humour or insight, too often this remake of an unremarkable Italian drama generates a similar sensation to rifling through somebody’s domestic refuse when the bin men are long overdue. Or immersing oneself in the profundity of The Emotional Quotient For Chicken Soup From Venus Or Mars.
Zach Braff essays the troubled protagonist, who like most contemporary heroes, is an architect in the grasp of an existential crisis. Is he grappling with Being And Nothingness? Concerned that he lives in a consumer paradise built on the financial oppression of the Third World? Not a bit of it. He’s worried because he lives in a beautiful house with his beautiful girlfriend (Barrett) and he’s fast approaching 30. Oh the humanity!
His mates are equally and unjustifiably dissatisfied. One finds himself unequal to fatherhood. Another can’t accept the dissolution of a long-term relationship.And so on. The older generation, meanwhile, do their bit for engulfing misery when an apparently stable marriage between Tom Wilkinson and Blythe Danner is revealed to be a sham. Inevitably, before you can say ‘young temptress’, one arrives to complicate matters further.
What exactly is going on here? Well, as the film explains, these problems between the sexes are unavoidable. Men, you see, like strippers and sex. Women, on the other hand, like having babies and monogamy. Well, I’m glad The Last Kiss has straightened that out for us.