Review of The Last Kiss (2006) by Markb. — 08 Nov 2006

Paul Haggis's and Tony Goldwyn's entertaining meditation on twentysomething yuppie angst (if those last three words didn't scare you away, you have a good-to-excellent chance of liking this) is one of the only movies ever made whose poster could've gotten away with filching the tagline of ANOTHER movie: Rob Reiner's 1985 romantic comedy The Sure Thing, with John Cusack, Daphne Zuniga and a very young Nicollette Sheridan: "The sure thing comes once in a lifetime.

The real thing lasts forever." Soon-to-be husband and father Michael (Zach Braff) is engaged to sweet, smart and lovely Jenna (Jacinda Barrett, quickly rebounding from Poseidon) but due to nagging "Is-that-all-there-is?" insecurities gets tempted by a stress-relieving, ego-boosting night with free spirit Kim (Rachel Bilson) who, while not exactly a clone of a certain bunny-boiling iconic 1987 movie figure, turns out to also not quite be the zipless fling Michael expected.

To the movie's credit, it credibly allows viewers to see both sides of the question: nearly all women will be as infuriated with Michael as Jenna is, while many men will want to shout at the screen, "Dude!!! You got a real babe waiting at home! What the hell are you DOING?!?!?" (The Last Kiss understands that the Kims of the world are ethereal while the Jennas are eternal.

) But the price Michael pays, coupled with the lengths he goes through to make amends and Braff's memorably hangdog persona, will leave nearly everyone in the audience hungry for reconciliation and redemption.

..and the final shot is wisely open-ended and bittersweet. By including lots of supporting and peripheral characters, writer Haggis attempts to dissect romance the way he did racism in Crash to less striking effect (sorry, Paul, but commitmentphobia just doesn't carry the urgency that racially-motivated killings do), but a sort of devil's-advocate counterpoint to the movie's general endorsement of monogamy--in the form of its depiction of the long, seemingly by-the-numbers marriage of Jenna's parents--really scores because Tom Wilkinson and especially Blythe Danner are so resonant.

Always a smart, interesting, appealing actress, Danner has become an indispensable one over the last decade: her portrayal of Ben Stiller's sweetly ditsy-like-a-fox future mother-in-law was one of the biggest strengths of Meet the Parents (and the ONLY genuine asset of its sequel).

Director Goldwyn's inventively composed closeup of lonely, seemingly unloved Anna (she's not, but she thinks she is, and that's what matters) getting ready for bed is, thanks to Danner's subtlety and artistry, the most indelible image in an American movie so far in 2006.