In ‘Last Man,’ Denial Survives Apocalypse

Fat, homely men who feel they have been wrongly underrepresented in underwear ads should flock to “The Last Man.” There are no underwear campaigns in the film, as such, although frequent sightings of a fat, homely anthropologist in Jockey shorts may move some of the more open-minded and stronger-stomached in the audience to start a run on Calvin Klein briefs.

Product placement and unappetizing nudity are the least of the sins committed by “The Last Man,” an end-of-the-world romantic comedy that has a lot else to answer for. The film’s writer and director, Harry Ralston, could begin by explaining why he thought that anyone would want to be held hostage for 90 minutes by a stridently self-absorbed tribal researcher, Alan (David Arnott), whose talent for denial outstretches even his waistline.

He could then help us understand why he chose to mediate much of Alan’s hapless plight through video. Alan, you see, discovers that he has inexplicably survived a mysterious agent that has killed off nearly all of the Earth’s population. So he breaks into a camera shop and makes off with state-of-the-art equipment with which to record his experiences and admonitions for the benefit of future cultures that are either very bored or very stupid.

It is through Alan’s ever-watchful camera that we see our chatty host seduce a voluptuous survivor named Sarah (Jeri Ryan), the sort of bodacious babe who would not give him a tumble if the competition were still breathing. And it is through Alan’s increasingly paranoid surveillance that we see Sarah swept away by a third survivor, a dashing and genial meathead named Raphael (Dan Montgomery).

The omnipresent video perspective, coupled with the clueless-trio-alone-in-the-wild motif, is more than a little redolent of “The Blair Witch Project.” Frankly, “The Last Man” is much scarier. Narcissism and myopia are terrifying to behold as embodied by Alan, who doesn’t buy the truth even when it’s rewound and played back to him, and the pathologically co-dependent Sarah, who genuinely believes her conduct toward others caused the recent apocalypse.

This may be Ralston’s point. There may even be some relationship truisms to be gleaned from his triangular mating charades. But his observations, for all the video hocus-pocus, are neither as acute nor as risible as we’re asked to think they are. And being trapped in a Winnebago with Arnott’s babbling Lothario, in or out of his Jockey shorts, is a kind of living damnation that even Dante or Sartre could not have conceived.

*

MPAA rating: R, for language, some sexual content and drug use.

‘The Last Man’

David Arnott...Alan

Jeri Ryan...Sarah

Dan Montgomery...Raphael

Laemmle Theatres and Castle Hill Productions present an Id Films production, released by Castle Hill. Writer-director Harry Ralston. Producers Tamara Hernandez, Jessica Rains, Harry Ralston. Executive producer Roger Avary. Cinematographer Michael Grady. Editor Tony Miller. Costume designer C.T. DeNelli. Music Woody Jackson, Ivan Knight. Production designer John Grant. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

Exclusively at Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica, (310) 394-9741.