The Last Man

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 saw this movie in part because of some positive comments here on IMDb. After wishing I had those 90 minutes of my life back, I feel it's my duty to get on here myself and say...Please don't bother watching this movie.

I can't argue with the actors efforts - they did what they could given the material, but that material is dreadful. The pace was deadly - slow, meandering, and you saw everything coming about an hour away, and then it took forever to happen. The dialogue was boring, pointless, not funny at all. The characters were all completely unsympathetic. And the cinematography was, in my opinion, very low quality - the cliché of "character uses home video machine!" was used to very bad effect.

Yes, Jeri Ryan is a cool person. Don't let that sucker you into wasting your time on this film.

After wasting 2 hours of my life watching this movie on late night television, I went back and reread some of the IMDb material, to remind myself of why I watched it in the first place. In hindsight, the only thing that I can think of is that the genre generally appeals to me. But this movie was a total waste of effort. It fails on every level, and to see that it's described on IMDb as a comedy really leaves me at a loss. I don't recall more than a couple of chuckles. There are more laughs in any episode of Law and Order than in The Last Man. Seriously.

Too much of the characters' interaction just didn't seem to me to have any foundation, and was therefore very unlikely/unbelievable.

If it hadn't been for the almost-gratuitous bikini shots, well, what can I say? Avoid this movie like the plague. Or tape it and just fast forward to the bikini shots. Do not spend even $1 to rent it though.

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.

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.