I will not lie. The Last Kiss is depressing, but it is also a story that is superbly told. Its trajectory of story and variety of situations show us that life is more than solitary moments and frozen actions. Multi-layered characters and stand-out performances from Jacinda Barrett, Casey Affleck, Tom Wilkinson, and Blythe Danner bring to life the rocky road of love in an authentic way that cannot be shaken. And at by its end, its story and its characters have taken us for a ride through much more than a one dimensional tragedy; they have drawn us into a story of humanity.

Braff has said that his character in The Last Kiss will make you hate him. The thing is, at the end of the movie, I actually liked him quite a lot. Yes, he is flawed. Yes, he makes choices that make you want to slap him upside the head. But in the end, he shows us that who we are and the lives we lead need not be defined by the mistakes we all make, but rather by our choice to rise above them.

On the surface, Braff’s Garden State and The Last Kiss may come across as polar opposites. But as I see it, The Last Kiss could almost be a continuation of the same story a few years down the road. It is the story of that almost giddily promising life when the promise has started to wear off. It is the reality that Natalie Portman’s goofy and carefree is just not something any of us can sustain 24/7, 365. It is the dull shock that even though we may have it all, figuring out what is means to live with it all is not as easy as it may seem.

But even though The Last Kiss is much darker than the almost carefree Garden State, in the end, it seems their message is the same—love wins. In the end, it is what really matters. It has more value than anything else with which we can fill our life with. It has more strength and power than even the most destructive forces we may encounter. Love wins because, at the end of the day, it is not about ourselves, our selfish desires, our ever present faults, or our desire to be at the top of the world 24/7, 365…love, when we recognize it for what it really is, is about giving of ourselves so that those we do love might truly live...