BEFORE: Blythe Danner carries over from "The Tomorrow Man", and yep, that's three in a row for her, there's been a lot of that sort of activity this time around - but this is the END of the romance/relationship chain. For now, of course, the topic is sort of ever-present but as a main focus, it goes back in the box until next February - unless, of course, one of the films needs to be re-purposed to keep the chain unbroken. It's been known to happen.
Jesus, it's been 47 films all told, this time around - it might have been shorter, if I hadn't dropped in a couple Oscar contenders to draw it out - but I felt the need to see at least a few, and they were available on streaming (or the movie screen at work), so why not? I just hope those decisions don't come back to bite me this November when I start running out of slots. I suppose that's a bit like a relationship, I make the best decisions I can at the time even though I can't see the possible long-term impact those decisions have. But I try not to think about it, like if I can't link to the Christmas movie I want, I don't think I'm going to say, "Damn, if only I hadn't watched "House of Gucci" back in February..." It's unlikely, plus I'll probably be saying, "If only I hadn't watched "House of Gucci"..." for entirely different reasons.
The TCM "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for tomorrow, March 19, puts the focus on "Best Actor" winners:
6:15 am "The Story of Louis Pasteur" (1936)
7:45 am "Captains Courageous" (1937)
10:00 am "Watch on the Rhine" (1943)
12:00 pm "Lilies of the Field" (1963)
2:00 pm "Sergeant York" (1941)
4:30 pm "Gandhi" (1982)
and 1980's Oscar winners:
8:00 pm "Out of Africa" (1985)
11:00 pm "On Golden Pond" (1981)
1:00 am "Places in the Heart" (1984)
3:00 am "A Fish Called Wanda" (1988)
5:00 am "Babette's Feast" (1987)
I've seen six of these: "Lilies of the Field", "Sergeant York", "Gandhi", "Out of Africa", "On Golden Pond" and "A Fish Called Wanda". I've got "Babette's Feast" on my watch list, but it's available on HBO Max (for now) so no need to clog up my DVR with it. Another 6 seen out of 11 brings me to 89 out of 209, also known as 42.5% - I guess I just do better on the weekends.
THE PLOT: Michael thought he'd have a great job, still have his best friends and be in love with a beautiful girl at age 30. He loves Jenna but his life seems predictable until he meets a college girl. It seems that everybody's having relationship problems.
AFTER: I like the fact that my last film in the chain is called "The Last Kiss", of course - but this also serves as sort of an end-cap on the topic, tying a few things together. The relationship issues here concern four men in different relationship situations, so it covers a lot of ground, and I suppose that was the intent. Then the long-term marriage of the lead female character's parents makes for five different situations among the ensemble. There's infidelity, a fair number of love triangles, mostly it's men in transition who have lost or are about to lose their relationships because of their actions, inactions, confusion or dissatisfaction. Yet in their hearts they probably all want to believe that the circumstances are beyond their control, which is another way of saying that none of them want to take responsibility for them. That's a method of dealing with things, I suppose, but it doesn't really help to make sympathetic characters - how about just pathetic?
Men are both the injured parties here, and also the ones doing the most damage, to their relationships, to others and even to themselves. Once any form of self-doubt enters into the equation of the relation, then they tend to cut bait and run. Is that the message here, men want to escape to Mars, and women want to stay on Venus? Michael's about to turn 30 and he and Jenna have agreed they're not ready to get married, but then when she gets pregnant, they don't want anything to change (because nobody wants to look like they're getting married JUST because of the baby, that's so gauche) but still, secretly, perhaps everything has changed. So when Michael meets a younger woman at a wedding who seems to be into him, he doesn't do anything to discourage her, because part of him just wants to see where that's going to lead. Yeah, it's nowhere good - or rather, it's somewhere TOO good, because before long he's hanging out with the younger woman and lying to his wife about where he's going and who he's hanging out with.
Michael's friend Chris is married with a young baby, and his wife is completely stressed out, because he's working and she's raising the kid, and suddenly he's not happy any more. OK, clearly something has changed and the relationship isn't what it once was, or is this just a domino effect caused by crying babies and the inequality of one person doing all the child-raising. Can't he work during the day and help out a little bit at home during the evenings, so his wife can get a break? No, apparently not. Well, better to just blow the whole relationship up then, I guess - wait, but then he'll be even more miserable, so how is that better than maybe changing a diaper once in a while? It's not, is it? Seriously, I don't know because I don't have kids and I've never changed a diaper - I'm sure it's no picnic, but it's got to be better than being a part-time dad and divorced person.
Their other friend, Izzy, had his girlfriend leave him, and he's still devastated by it. It's not really clear what he did wrong to make her leave, but I have a feeling he did SOMEthing. Or maybe not, who knows, maybe the relationship just fizzled out, and now he wants to just drive all the way to Tierra Del Fuego - and, umm, then what? The final male friend in the foursome is Kenny, he at least seems to have life somewhat figured out, he just wants to have a lot of sex with many different women - it's a solid plan, and it seems to be working for him, if only he didn't have a friend begging him to drive to Tierra Del Fuego with him.
And then there's Anna and Stephen, Jenna's long-time married parents, only they don't have things very together, either. Anna had an affair with a college professor a while back, and she's chosen this same momentous week to inform her husband about it. He's stayed faithful all these years, but apparently she hasn't. The film doesn't really get into the reasons behind this one, either, but it's another love triangle that kind of mirrors the one between Michael, Jenna and Kim, only gender-swapped. And just maybe, Jenna can learn some kind of way to forgive Michael once she realizes that her own mother couldn't stay faithful to her father, either. Or maybe that's asking too much, for that kind of understanding between the generations.
Everybody's always looking for something else, I get that. Or they want what they already have, plus just a little bit more - that's just human nature, I suppose. Hope springs eternal that you can make your situation better - but if you over-reach, like you think you can have an affair AND keep the relationship you have, that's probably not going to work, and you'll end up destroying what you had in the first place, it's more than likely. So why can't anybody SEE that here, and just think, "Nope, I'm satisfied with what I've got." I guess that's the big question. The most insight into love and romance comes from Kim, though, who says, "Sometimes relationships work, and sometimes they don't." Wow, she must have really worked hard on THAT one - really, is that the best she's got? Her other big insight is that marriage was created when the average person lived only to the age of 30, so perhaps it was never meant to be a long-term thing. Wow, she's really as deep as a puddle, isn't she?
So, I guess here, at the end of the relationship chain, it's all about endings. Everything is going to end, every relationship, every job, everything you set out to do, it's all got an expiration date and the clock is ticking, though you may not know when things are going to end, they WILL end, one way or another. Anyone who's in a long-term relationship has only succeeded in preventing failure for exactly that length of time. For that matter, someday the sun will go supernova and life on Earth will cease to exist - and the galaxies are merely popcorn kernels that have been spilled out of the cosmic bucket, and one day even they will be swept up into the black holes, which are the trash bins of the universe, if you think about it. Wow, now I'm depressed again. Thanks so much, "The Last Kiss".
Also starring Zach Braff (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Jacinda Barrett (last seen in "Middle Men"), Casey Affleck (last seen in "Ain't Them Bodies Saints"), Rachel Bilson (last seen in "The To Do List"), Michael Weston (last seen in "Liberal Arts"), Eric Christian Olsen (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Marley Shelton (last seen in "Scream 4"), Lauren Lee Smith (last seen in "The Shape of Water"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "The Samaritan"), Harold Ramis (last seen in "Orange County"), Danny Wells, David Haydn-Jones, Cindy Sampson, Mark Walker, Erika Rosenbaum, Simon Alain, Andrew Shaver (last seen in "The Glass Castle"), Danette Mackay (last seen in "The Greatest Game Ever Played").
RATING: 4 out of 10 RVs for sale on the lot
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