The Last Man

I watched this with my wife tonight and she couldn't understand why they would choose to live in a mobile home in the desert if they were the last people alive and could live anywhere they wanted. I said it was his home and he had all his stuff there. Also, whatever killed everyone might be more prevalent in the cities and the cities would reek of death. Your average home might have at least 3 or 4 bodies decaying in them which would leave most neighborhoods smelling pretty bad. And water and electrical services would tend to stop fairly soon after the collapse. But we all know that it was an inexpensive set and being out there, you didn't have to worry about people stumbling on to the set or planes flying by. I enjoy these kinds of movies with Vincent Prices' THE LAST MAN ON THE EARTH, and ON THE BEACH being dismal masterpieces about the end of civilization as we know it.

THE LAST MAN is more light-hearted than most of these types of films and the psychology here is good and believable, though the effects of being the last man are far better shown in the aforementioned films. This was a fun and intellectual waste of ninety minutes and better than most of the mindless drivel on t.v. like Big Brother, Blind Date and other crap programming that seems all the rage these days.

This film is a dead ringer. Had all the actors performed as well as the main character, I would vote this a film of the year.

Such expert use of thematic elements and excellent story telling is a rarity in comedy films. I can't recall ever laughing so hard at a scenes without dialog or having seen humour set up so completely with juxtaposition and other thematic/story telling elements. The writer/director must have had a liberal arts education. I won't be surprised if this film is remade in Hollywood, it's that exceptional.

The 2 audio commentaries add to the aura of this already excellent film, with intelligent and funny behind the scenes dialog.

I totally enjoyed the resourcefulness and cleverly successful writing and casting of this film. I suppose those words imply the appearance of a 'low budget' film -- but I will swing it in the other direction as the disappearance of a 'low budget' film into one that delivered an expertly crafted experience to the viewer.

My only complaint, if I am entitled one, would be the abrupt ending, as if one simply disconnected a video player before the ending.

But then, that was the point.

The movie could have gone the way of cutesiness or played up the drama of the situation too much, or pulled on our heart strings, but it didn't.

Another commenter has said you might be offended if you are a "fat balding dufus", but this movie is about so much more than that. To say that, however, is to oversimplify the situation. This movie does justice to real human emotion. When he is the last man, she knows it will be hard, but tries to make things work. She seems irrational at times but ultimately is very rational. She is even willing to overlook the superficial faults of the first man when the second comes along.

Ultimately, it wasn't that he was a fat balding grad student and "rafael" was so much more attractive that caused her to make the decision she did. It was the grad student's obsessions and inability to deal with her as anything but a sex object that ultimately drove her away from him. Near the end, he almost sees himself for who he truly is, and even begins to speak it (comparing his situation to a saying of the Indian tribe he is obsessed with), but conveniently has forgotten the rest of the old saying, and misses realizing that their wisdom has a saying to describe just what he is. Instead, he blames others for his own fault.

I think the writers did an excellent job of being fair to all the characters here. Nobody in this movie ended up with anything less than they deserved, and they each had a chance to show who they really were. Even the "fat, balding dufus" had a chance to shine - he just passed it up out of jealousy and spite.

Banal, unfunny musing on post-apocalyptic schlephood, brightened only by the appearance of the always-photogenic Jeri Ryan. Slick production value can't disguise the trite premise. If you were the last man on earth and this was the last movie, you might take up solitaire.