The Last Kiss – Blu-ray Review

By Frankie Dees Apr 26, 2009, 18:13 GMT

"The Last Kiss" is a contemporary comedy-drama about life, love, infidelity, forgiveness, marriage, friendship... and coming to grips with turning 30. ...more

A much better film than you would expect from the title, ‘The Last Kiss’ is not a fluffy chick flick but rather a brutally honest film about relationships from the point-of-view of several men at different stages of their life. The film is headlined by a great performance from Zach Braff.

Zach Braff, who seems to want to tread different ground with his film career with smart dramedy like ‘Garden State’ and ‘The Last Kiss’ compared to the more broad comedy shtick of his popular sitcom ‘Scrubs,’ doesn’t direct or write this time out but you can definitely tell why Braff was drawn to the material when looking at ‘Garden State’.

A remake of a French film ‘L’ultimo bacio’ from Gabriele Muccino, who went Hollywood with Will Smith melodramas ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ and ‘Seven Pounds’ and in true French New Wave fashion is picking back up with these characters on a sequel to ‘L’ultimo bacio’, ‘The Last Kiss’ is also scripted by Oscar-winner Paul Haggis (‘Million Dollar Baby’, ‘Crash’) so there’s some nice pedigree here.

The film follows a group of friends as they negotiate their love lives at various stages and with differing mindsets, chiefly Michael (Zach Braff) who is closing in on his 30th birthday and soon finds out that his live-in girlfriend Jenna (Jacinda Barrett) is pregnant. With marriage soon to follow, Michael kind of freaks knowing there will be no more surprises in his life.

We also meet Chris (Casey Affleck) who is stuck in what seems like a loveless, suffocating marriage with an infant daughter, Izzy (Michael Weston) who is nursing a broken heart after a woman he’s in love with broke up with him and has no problem moving on and Kenny (Eric Christian Olsen), the requisite player who has no qualms about bedding a constant stream of different women.

The mature group is represented by Jenna’s parents (Tom Wilkinson and Blythe Danner) who have a little subplot relationship trouble themselves. When all the friends attend the wedding of a mutual friend, Michael meets a young college gal Kim (Rachel Bilson) who takes a liking to him and while he first resists, the pregnancy weighs heavy on his mind and he eventually succumbs to his temptation.

Things go awry, however, when he tries to get the straight-laced Chris to cover for him and Jenna finds out. This sets into a motion a series of extremely awkward scenes where Michael realizes his mistake and tries to win the livid Jenna back. While that scenario is nothing new, it’s handled in a frank manner that’s rarely seen in film with flawed, realistic personalities that make them immediately relatable.

Zach Braff, Casey Affleck, Tom Wilkinson, Jacinda Barrett and Rachel Bilson all offer up fully-realized characters based on Haggis’ densely layered script. The only real flaw is that the film may be a bit too bleak and relatable for most, a little too close to comfort. If you’re living one of these particular lives, the last thing you want to do is pay to see it play out in front of you. It’s one heck of an effective film, though, based on what it was trying to achieve.

The film is presented with a 1080p MPEG4 encode and it’s a decent if expectedly not mind-blowing high-def transfer. A little grain is present but nothing too distracting. All in all, it’s fine for what the film is. A Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track is included and again is adequate if slightly flawed.

For special features, we get two audio commentaries, the first with Zach Braff and director Tony Goldwyn and the second with Braff, Goldwyn, Jacinda Barrett, Rachel Bilson, Michael Weston and Eric Christian Olsen.

Both are fun tracks, actually, with very little dead space although the full cast commentary is probably the one to listen to if you can only listen to one. ‘Filmmakers’ Perspective’ is a quick two-minute featurette, ‘Getting Together’ is a more comprehensive 30-minute look at what else? Getting the film together.

‘Behind Our Favorite Scenes’ has cast and crew talking about their favorite moments, ‘Last Thoughts’ are some quick comments from the cast about how the film ended up. A music video for Cary Brothers song ‘Ride’, 14-minutes of ‘Deleted Scenes’, a ‘Gag Reel’ and the Theatrical Trailer rounds things out.

As I said before, ‘The Last Kiss’ is a much better film than you might think judging by the lip-smacked cover which is trying to sell the film as a feel-good romantic comedy - which the film is anything but. It does have humor and romance but the romance is of the real, emotionally-earned kind – there’s nary a kiss in the rain to be seen.

A great cast and solid direction from actor Tony Goldwyn also get this pic a recommendation if you haven’t checked it out yet. The Blu-ray specs are simply okay, however, so if you already have the DVD, there’s nothing here that would really require a double dip.

The Last Kiss [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon. Visit the DVD database for more information.