Friday,
September 15, 2006
"The Last Kiss"
Remake of 2001 Italian movie "L'Ultimo Bacio" Fails to Arouse
The ANNOTICO
Report
Even a coupling
of the star, Zach Braff of "Garden
State," his last offering (which he also wrote and directed), and writer
Paul Haggis, fresh from striking gold with the Oscar-winning
"Crash.", can't bring this remake up to the Original Italian Film.
A FINAL KISS BEFORE GROWING UP
The
By David Grosz
September 15, 2006
About halfway
through "The Last Kiss," a remake of the 2001 Italian movie "L'Ultimo Bacio," the action
comes to a head. As friends gather following the death of one of their fathers,
Jenna (Jacinda Barrett) is surprised to find Chris
(Casey Affleck) but not her boyfriend, Michael (Zach Braff),
since the two were supposedly out together. Until then, Jenna has seemed
easygoing and unflappable; however, being pregnant and unmarried, she is more
vulnerable than she lets on. As Chris stumbles to provide an alibi for his
friend, Jenna grows suspicious. It turns out she has reason to be: Michael is
at a frat party with Kim (Rachel Bilson), a
flirtatious undergraduate who offers escape from thoughts of impending
fatherhood and marriage.
When Michael
returns home hours later, Jenna knows everything but the details. A screaming
match ensues, and for a moment this movie, which during its first hour hops
lazily from clichi to clichi,
finds its heart at the height of its melodrama. Then Jenna inexplicably pulls a
knife on Michael, and the viewer knows that once again the
film's woeful script has failed to provide the words to make a poignant
situation believable. As if acknowledging this failure, Michael, who had
rebuffed Kim earlier that evening, rushes to her dorm room to consummate the
affair. The remainder of the film is a parody of regret, confession, and penance.
"The Last
Kiss" is a movie about the crisis of turning 30, which, in our era of
prolonged adolescence, amounts to the crisis of coming-of-age. Other than Kim
and Jenna's parents, all the principal characters are 29 and hopelessly
confused. Chief among the lost are Michael's three best friends, who seem less
like actual people than stereotypes of different ways young men can suffer at
the hands of women: Chris, who has lost his will in an overstressed,
unsupportive marriage; Izzy (Michael Weston), the
pathetic dumpee still stuck on an ex; and Kenny (Eric
Christian Olsen), the womanizing relationship-phobe.
The other
characters are barely more interesting.The day after
her one-night encounter with Michael, Kim shows up at his workplace with a new
mix CD in hand, as if to remind us that she's just a college student. When
Jenna's parents' marriage suddenly gets rocky (they've been together for 30
years, after all), the mother (Blythe Danner) runs to a former lover, who of
course is now happily married.Jenna's father,
meanwhile, is one of cinema's most tired stereotypes: the cold shrink who
listens to his patients' problems all day long but fails to recognize his own
wife's suffering. Thankfully, he is played by the ever-excellent Tom Wilkinson,
who makes him the film's most rounded personality.
Whom are we to blame for
"The Last Kiss?" Some will point to the star, Mr. Braff.
In "
But the failure
of "The Last Kiss" is not limited to its inert dialogue or
warmed-over story. As in "Crash," the film seems to think it can make
do without realistic personalities, since its characters are meant to represent
types of behavior, to fill slots in the plot. After Jenna is betrayed, she acts
like the generic hysterical woman who's been wronged, not like Jenna. Michael's
friends plan a long road trip to
When Kim bumps
into Michael at a wedding in the beginning of the movie, the encounter is meant
to be something of a mini-crash. But there is no electricity, no chemistry. At
first, Michael is confused by her interest; later, he's bemused. That a young
man in a committed relationship and expecting a baby would have an affair with
a girl he met at a wedding is entirely believable, as is the fact that he would
have it with someone he wasn't that interested in; similar stories have driven
powerful movies in the past. But not these two, not the way it happens.
"You make me feel 10 years younger," he says when they kiss.
"You're making me lose my mind," she responds. The words are entirely
unconvincing, and not only for me. Watch the actors. They don't buy it, either.
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