Metacritic Film

Last Time, The

Starring Michael Keaton, Amber Valletta, Brendan Fraser, Neal McDonough, and Michael Lerner

MPAA RATING: R for pervasive language and sexual content

Sony Pictures Entertainment
Comedy  |  Drama  |  Romance
96 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters May 18, 2007

A salesman (Keaton) rediscovers a lust for life after falling for the fiancée of his new business partner (Fraser), a Midwest transplant finding his footing in New York City. (Sony Pictures Entertainment)

WRITTEN BY
Michael Caleo

DIRECTED BY
Michael Caleo

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

38 / 100

Critic Reviews

63 TV Guide
The result is a little bit nutty and pretty entertaining in a thoroughly unconvincing way. And watch out for that 11th-hour twist -- it's a head snapper.
50 New York Daily News
The Last Time feels like a script that was written backwards, as if the twist ending occurred to Caleo first and he then filled out a story to get to it. Fair enough, except getting there in this case is just no fun.
50 The Hollywood Reporter
While Michael Keaton and Brendan Fraser turn in a pair of sturdy performances, the film itself proves to be a harder sell, especially because it looks and sounds like Mamet but proves to be a flimsy knockoff.
50 Variety
Although this "Sopranos" writing vet delivers several flashes of that show's dark humor and irony, the pic leaves a hollow feeling at the end.
40 LA Weekly Tim Grierson
The Last Time seems even more hapless than the Midwestern rube it's skewering.
40 Los Angeles Times
The movie unravels pretty quickly as Caleo almost immediately gives away the "what" but remains marginally entertaining as he manages to maintain some suspense in the "why" and the "how" before blowing the genre completely by going soft in the resolution.
40 The New York Times
A Michael Keaton outing is always cause for celebration, no matter how ramshackle the vehicle ("First Daughter," anyone?) or paper-thin the role.
30 Village Voice Aaron Hillis
Beyond his technical clumsiness, Caleo seems convinced that real men exert power by being A-type jerks and all women are sluts. If nothing else, this film serves as a troubling psychological profile of a filmmaker who feels scornfully cynical toward nothing in particular.
25 New York Post
Despite solid contributions by vets such as Michael Lerner and Daniel Stern, Caleo isn't able to sell The Last Time - not the affair and especially not the ludicrous twist ending.

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