The Last Kiss (2006) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

It's interesting to read the reviews of this movie which were written by people who had previously seen the original Italian version. They were divided between those who said, "This film takes a silly Italian fluff comedy and makes it something profound," and those who said that the American version lost everything that was good about the original. All of which goes to prove Scoopy's Prime Theorem, which states that no matter how ridiculous an opinion seems to you, somebody holds it. To validate the theorem, pick a film that you completely despise. Not one that you're lukewarm about, but one that was just laughably bad. Then check out its "user comments" at IMDb, and find that several commenters will praise it for some reason or another. Indeed, the very definition of a cult film is "one that not many people will like, but those who do like it adore it, for reasons which mystify the vast majority of us."

I suppose all of that is largely irrelevant to my comments here, since I don't really remember "L'ultimo bacio," the Italian film upon which this one is based, even though I just read my own review of it. To me The Last Kiss seems like a pretty routine Gex-X romantic dramedy about that stage of life that most people of both genders go through when their youth is over, but they're not yet ready to assume adult responsibilities. The stage often comes with a fear of commitment, since the very nature of a commitment involves sort of a final admission that one is no longer young and irresponsible. In this version of the story, Zach Braff plays a guy whose life has turned out just about perfect. His girlfriend is gorgeous and "one of the guys." His job as a young architect reflects exactly where he wanted to be in life, and he's movin' on up in the profession. He has good friends.

But his girlfriend is pregnant - and that seems so ... final. So committed.

At a friend's wedding he finds that a beautiful college junior is totally into him and, given his current state of mind, he eventually gives in to her advances. He really likes her and has a great night with her, but when it is over he realizes that he has really screwed up. On the one hand he's allowed the college girl to think they have something great, and on the other hand he's ruined the perfect relationship he had with his significant other.

The essence of the movie's denouement involves whether or not he can fix things, and if so, how.

I learned something very important from this movie: I was born too soon. Here's how things work in Generation X: you fool around, your girlfriend catches you, you whine and snivel, and she takes you back. Bottom line: you should cheat, because then you get to have the steady relationship with a woman who is a good friend, but you also get to sample that college poontang knowing that you can beg your way back into your regular relationship.

Man, you kids today have it good with your forgiving girlfriends and your computers, and your internets and your April-fresh Downy. In my day, girlfriends wouldn't take you back when the whole world knew that you were fuckin' a hot chick on the side, and we had to do our term papers with chisels on stone tablets, and our Downy was never any fresher than St. Patrick's Day. You guys have it all.

Plus you have, as the official voice of your generation, Zach Braff. Although one reviewer pointed out that if this is true, then your generation's voice is awfully squeaky and whiny. Point scored. I don't see a future for Zach in Spaghetti Westerns as the new Eastwood.

Actually, it's an OK movie despite a surfeit of navel-gazing. I guess that means I'm the only reviewer who thought that both this and the Italian original were both OK but nothing special. The American version manages to succeed fairly well by walking a tightrope between drama and comedy. Measured solely as a comedy, it's not a zany laughfest. Measured solely as a drama, it's not very profound and it's not very moving, which is a bit of a disappointment because it was written the the author of Crash. But it works ah-ight as a talky, character-based romance which comes much closer to real life than most Hollywood romances. Despite what I wrote above, it manages to zero in fairly well on feelings which are common to young adults of every generation. I was kidding above when I implied that it's just about today's yuppies - I went through a very similar situation when my first wife was pregnant with our first child. And let's face it, the symbolic voices of my generation (John Lennon, Paul Simon) weren't so very macho either. If you pop The Graduate, my generation's equivalent of this film, into your DVD player, you'll probably realize that Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin looks and talks like a shorter version of Zach Braff.

And the film has some nice nudity, especially in the deleted scenes. Whether you like the movie or not - and critics were really split on this on - you have to admit that the creative team did a great job on the DVD. It is filled with extra features: commentary, deleted scenes, a blooper reel, "making of" featurettes, a rock video, and so forth. Of special interest to those of us who look for the nude scenes, there is a hot and funny extended version of the bachelor party scene, and there is another scene which offers a brief flash of  breastitude from Marley Shelton, who was not naked in the film proper.