The mistake was one out of my control–I went to view a movie for class, and Netflix shipped the wrong one. Instead of viewing L’Ultimo Bacio, I had to watch The Last Kiss.

My assessment of the movie was that the characters were poorly created. It seemed like they all had two emotions: angry and angrier.

Perhaps this movie presents the emotional crisis of turning thirty accurately. The main male characters all strive for freedom from their various relationships, but they lack enough redeeming qualities to make them likeable. The female characters are even less dimensional. There’s the exhausted mother. The mother-to-be who is an emotional wreck.

Out of this rather bland and all-together easy to forget movie (even though I watched this mere hours ago, all I can think of was, “my God, I hate Zack Braff even more now” and “At least Casey Affleck was entertaining enough”), I got one little bit of insight:

To have a watchable/readable story, you need a decent enough conflict. To have a very entertaining story, you need well developed characters.