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All the while, Michael begins a contrived affair with a young college student, Kim (Rachel Bilson). Michael’s friends also face relationship crises. One faces a deteriorating marriage (Casey Affleck), a dying father (Michael Weston), and an aimless barrister (Eric Christian Olson) that seems to have no other reason to be in the movie other than that he closely resembles an Abercrombie and Fitch model.

The affair rambles from cliche to cliche until a ridiculously foreseeable ending. Braff and Bilson lack the chemistry that Braff and Natalie Portman portray in Garden State and every scene the two are in is so awkward that the viewer almost mistakes it for the High School Musical sequel. Bilson seems to have been plucked right out of the “O.C.” set and dropped into this central Wisconsin scene.

The only actors to salvage some semblance of a romantic comedy are Tom Wilkinson and Blythe Danner. Danner and Wilkinson play Barrett’s parents whose relationship breaks down around the same time as Braff and Barrett’s. The relationship between Wilkinson and Danner shows signs of strain but, unlike the Braff-Bilson-Barratt love triangle, have decidedly more depth.

The amount of characters and intertwining plots got writer Paul Haggis the Academy Award for Crash, but in this film, the intertwining plot seems forced and unnecessary. Haggis seems unable to write a relatively simple love story, which in the end, is all that viewers really wanted.

Overall, I felt let down by The Last Kiss. Perhaps I expected too much, or set my standards too high, but Kiss wanted to have the same influence Garden State did. Frankly, it never got off the ground.