Braff’s character is far from completely loveable, especially as the movie progresses and his decisions become more and more deplorable, but the script (based on Gabriele Muccino’s “L’ultimo bacio” and adapted by Paul Haggis) keeps Michael’s motivations understandable. This is why this film translates so well to an entire generation. It is Michael’s hesitation to grow up and not only face his responsibility, but also sacrifice all his chances to lead a different kind of life, that will resonate with an entire movie-going age group (and you probably know who you are). A main theme of the movie revolves around the idea that a mid-life crisis can occur earlier than it used to. While Michael and Kim hide out in a tree house at a wedding reception (Peter Pan reference, anyone?), she says to him, “The world is moving so fast now that we start freaking long before our parents did because we don’t ever stop to breathe any more.”

Alongside Michael’s own struggles, it is the well-acted subplots that keep “The Last Kiss” from being bogged down in baby-mama drama. Some of the side stories evolve from the lives of Michael’s best friends, and include a pal with a dissolving marriage, a panicked post-break up drifter and a carnally-inclined bartender. And while these plot lines provide much comic relief, they also try to pack a little too much into the movie, and each leaves off feeling slightly overlooked and unfinished.

It is the interactions between Jenna’s parents, played by Blythe Danner and Tom Wilkinson, which provide the parallel plot line that ties “The Last Kiss” together. Faced with their own dissolving marriage, the couple wittily and movingly provides a counterpoint to Michael and Jenna’s relationship, and provides insights into what taking the surprise-free route through life really entails. Some of the most thoughtful (and sometimes heavy-handed) moments of the film are the ones that occur between Danner and Barrett, and Wilkinson and Braff. Danner, playing a house-wife in a crisis of her own, makes the decision to leave her husband and tells her holier-than-thou daughter in a choked but convincing voice that she has no idea what goes into a 30-year marriage.

And while the male leads in “The Last Kiss” successfully pull off the indecision and rising panic that can amount from being led to believe that you should settle down before you hit 30, it is the females who really test their acting ranges (and pull it off) in this film. Stilted lover Jenna goes from a perfectly generic loving girlfriend to a knife-wielding, hormonal train wreck without ever crossing into unbelievably histrionic waters. And Rachel Bilson, known on The O.C. for her fashionable wardrobe and quick one-liners, offers up a vulnerability that makes ‘the other woman’ hated, pitied and lovably flawed all at the same time. While it is only the men in The Last Kiss who are allowed to feel and act upon the oncoming panic of adulthood and responsibility, there is no character in this movie who isn’t flawed, and who doesn’t err, and who isn’t understandably, undeniably human.

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