The Last Kiss

So I got tickets to a free screening for this movie last night and Megan came with me and although I didn’t have much in the way of expectations, mostly because why, because I thought it was a romantic comedy and romantic comedies these days are by and large very unsatisfying to me, with the rare exception, and let me say I want very much to see a great romantic comedy, I love the idea of romantic comedy, but more and more they fail in some way, if not altogether, and I think, okay, I liked SO much of While You Were Sleeping, for example, Chicago, being single on Christmas, losing parents, weird dates, having elaborate crushes on people you don’t know, but I remember thinking why the whole coma thing? would it not be enough of a story if Sandra Bullock was dating this one guy but then started to fall for his brother? without the coma and the bitchy fiancée of the original brother and what ever else have you? But and still, a free movie’s a free movie even if you have to pay eight bucks to park which is the same as public transportation for two people and which goes nowhere near this particular theater anyway, unless you feel like taking several buses, which, when one has a car, one usually doesn’t if one is me, especially when you know you’re going to be out past ten o clock which is when you usually go to bed but you picture yourself schlepping on the bus at that hour all bleary and just wanting to be in bed. Plus Ben was away and I didn’t figure he’d want to come with me to what I was thinking was a romantic comedy anyway, but it was in fact, what I’d call a drama, with some comedy, which some might call a “dramedy”, but not me, because if I use made up words I like them to be words I made up myself. Anyway, I was thinking that maybe the new dark chocolate m&ms might be the highlight of the entertainment portion of the evening (because conversations with Megan are always reliably enjoyable), but in fact, although these m&ms were quite good, they were only a compliment to a movie that I thought worked really well, and gave us both food for thought and many things to discuss afterward. Basically the story focuses on this one guy who’s kinda freaking because his girlfriend is pregnant and he thinks there are no more surprises even though they clearly have a great relationship and they laugh a lot about goofy stuff like we do, and he looks at her like Ben looks at me, all of which I wish for anyone, because it’s really pretty great, except anyway so he sleeps with this college girl and realizes he’s fucked up and/but there are also several other couples and single guys that each have their own kind of relationship problems that are all interrelated pretty well, I think. Anyway, the thing is, not only did Megan and I restate the obviousness and the wonder of how lucky we are to have our Bens and our Christophers, because neither of us has understood why you’d want to be with someone who wasn’t Ben or Christopher-ish, which although I’ve dabbled much over the years, I never married them, I waited, because it always seemed better to me to be alone than not to be with a Ben, and maybe this was a result of having seen too many romantic comedies, I don’t know, holding onto the hope that my Ben was out there somewhere rather than opting for some less-than-Ben, but, because this film, I thought, was a pretty realistic, honest look at how many relationships are, good, bad and inbetween, and we’ve also had our share of relationship issues prior to the Bens and the Christophers, and our friends have their share, I had cause to rethink things like the concept of forgiveness, what’s forgivable and what isn’t, I thought it was interesting that cheating here in this movie is potentially forgivable but being verbally abusive isn’t, because depending on the circumstances that actually makes sense to me, anyway, I’m going to stop talking now because I’m growing a little weary of checking to see if my sentences are actually working out in any way here. I realize this is not your typical ringing endorsement for a film, so if I haven’t made it clear already I’ll leave you with – I liked it.