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Zach Braff and Rachel Bilson in The Last Kiss |
Shallow characters in this low-brow movie
THE LAST KISS
Directed by Tony Goldwyn
Certificate 15
THE Last Kiss is a coming of age flick for 30-somethings.
Ultimately this film is about what the American feminist writer Naomi Woolf would call the effect of the Male – Industrial complex. The pressure on women to conform is well documented. In this film, it is the man who is always chasing some kind of idealised idea of the perfect woman, the perfect marriage, the perfect relationship. It is, of course, nonsense, as are the unobtainable and probably non-existent worlds the sad and deluded characters inhabit in the this film.
But the idea of our childhoods reaching well into our 30s is an interesting premise.
The film makes an interesting comment on how marriage and settling down has changed since the Baby Boomer generation. But the MTV generation, who seem, according to this flick, to demand nothing less than constant and unending sexual gratification, find it hard to bring together the conservative valued factors of conforming to the two-point-four children idea and still wanting to sow some wild oats.
Focusing on a group of men who have known each other all their lives, we meet a variety of shallow characters who outwardly seem successful but inwardly are still searching for some meaning.
And this group are not the sort of people you would want to call your friends. At first they appear to be as selfish and unlikeable group of unsatisfied nobodies you could possibly imagine.
There is a distinct lack of time taken over establishing their bona fides. We find out about them in little dribs and drabs and ultimately it means you don’t care enough about what happens to them to engage with the film.
We meet architect Michael, who has discovered his long term partner Jenna is pregnant. Suddenly he is all sweaty palms. Pregnant? No!
That means he may have to settle down. Suddenly his girlfriend is not all he thought she was. Adverts featuring underwear models begin to loom large in his mind, whenever she appear in front of him.
And then a young, beautiful, sex-crazed student does her upmost to seduce him. What should he do?
Thus starts a tiny bit of hand wringing and then a one night stand. His chums all have similar dilemmas. One has lost his childhood sweetheart and another just wants to work in a bar and sleep with anyone he can.
Although well made, a cheesy and predictable ending shows quite how little intelligence this film really has.
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