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by Flick Chick Vique Rojas

I give The Last Kiss 3 ½ Red Vines for being a thoughtful dramedy for all ages

Love hurts. But never so much as it does in The Last Kiss. Still this movie about relationships at every stage packs plenty of laughs, even if they are at the expense of all our foolish choices in the pursuit of happiness.

Unlike, Garden State, Zach Braff merely stars in this movie. He did not write it or direct it. Nonetheless, it is his movie. And a good one at that. In it, Braff plays Michael, a man who feels the walls closing in on him now that his ‘perfect’ live-in-love finds herself pregnant and he’s on the verge of turning thirty.

Suddenly, the finality of adulthood is all too real.He’s not the only one who’s feeling ‘young and restless’ though. His friends all have issues in the romance department: one is in the complete agony of dumpsville, another is getting married, another feels bored and trapped, while a fourth only wants to have ‘fun’. Even the senior couple in this melodrama, are at a crisis point in their thirty-year marriage.

As if he weren’t confused enough, a gorgeous, precocious little college coed enters Michael’s life and proves to be a temptation too strong to resist in his weakened state. To say that his infidelity proves to be a horrible mistake would be an understatement.

There are times when this movie is very hard to watch. It rings with so much truth, I sometimes hated it. It would be nice if all guys wanted the same things that most women want but as the saying goes, those dudes are from Mars and we are from Venus. Even the chicks that come across like Martians turn out to be Venetians in disguise when ‘party girls’ end up wanting a committed relationship with their fun.

All the actors do a great job of breathing life and believability into their characters. You’ve met all these people before. You’re one of them. Is it the person afraid to commit? The one happy with newfound freedom? The unappreciated one? The one who’s been cheated on? The one who just can’t seem to scratch his or her way out of the doghouse?

Zach Braff once again does a great job. You will feel his pain and regret as well as his confusion and awkwardness. Jacinda Barrett (Bridger Jones: The Edge of Reason) is very comfortable in her role as his pregnant girlfriend who gets a very rude awakening.
While Rachel Bilson (The O.C.),in her big screen debut, is fetching as the college coed enamored with an older man.

Blythe Danner turns in a gut wrenching performance sure to get a nomination come Oscar time, matched in quiet strength by Michael Weston (Garden State, The Full Monty). They play Braff’s girlfriend’s parents with heart and a weariness that can only come from thirty years of work. Because if you ever doubted it before, this movie is a testament to the fact that good relationships take work. A lot of work.