Romantic comedy??? Perhaps a romantic dark comedy without too much romance or comedy...although I did find myself laughing a few times. Wes Bently stars as Evan Merak, an aloof person with his own issues. He professionally composes suicide notes like a Russian novelist. He attends the funerals of those who actually go through with the deed, mostly to hear and critique his own composure read out loud.

While attending a funeral he meets the moody Charlotte (Winona Ryder) the sister of a victim. They end up dating. Evan tries to keep his specific relationship with her brother a secret and lies to Charlotte. Charlotte is comparatively unsophisticated, and like Winona she thinks a good date is one that doesn't try to "steal my credit card." (One of my several LOL moments.) In one early scene at a diner she has on no make-up or jewelry then in the next scene she is driving Evan home from said diner and has on her painted face as well as wearing pearls...something she wears later on in the film...Geoffrey Haley,another Ed Wood academy graduate. Here's your card.

While Evan is trying to keep things a secret, he is aiding other clients which raises Charlotte's curiosity level. You wait for the climax scene when he confesses everything to her. Decent film for quirky indie lovers.

F-bomb (thank you Winona),no on screen sex or nudity

This film takes one good character, one good performance and some vaguely amusing banter and buries it under an avalanche of moral obtuseness, male wish fulfillment and bizarrely incompetent writing. Writer/director Geoffrey Haley somehow came up with an outlandish premise that was rich in potential for dark comedy and satire, but demonstrates in the making of this movie that he didn't have the emotional or intellectual depth to do a damn thing with it.

Evan (Wes Bentley) is a young writer in Los Angeles who makes a living writing for a particular sort of special occasion. He composes suicide notes for other people. People contact Evan through his website, he learns about their lives and then composes beautifully poetic final messages for them. Only about 30% of Evan's clients actually off themselves, but that's besides the point. This is a morally reprehensible thing to do. It's inviting people at the lowest point in their lives to come to you and then treating them with something worse than indifference. It's not just standing on the shore and watching someone else drown. It's standing on the shore, watching someone else drown and yelling out as they go under for the third time "Is there anything you want me to tell your mom after you're gone?"

It's a horrible act and Evan is completely oblivious to how horrible it is, which makes him an even more horrible person…but that's okay. A person with such a stunted and disconnected nature could be a very interesting character. The problem is that the story is oblivious to the awfulness of Evan's actions. There's not a moment in this film where there's any sense given that there's anything wrong with what Evan is doing, except that other people might disapprove. Not only is that offensive, but such profound moral ignorance is boring.

The stuff that happens to Evan starts when he attends the funeral of one of his clients to hear if the suicide note is read aloud, so Evan can critique his own work. His dead client's sister, Charlotte (Winona Ryder),notices him and here's where the male wish fulfillment comes in. Evan is dull as dishwater, lacking in any social graces and seems not just disinterested but annoyed at Charlotte's attention. Yet, this lovely, sexy, smart and vulnerable woman continues to throw herself at Evan until he deigns to have sex with her and become her boyfriend. It's every lonely nerd's ultimate fantasy. A hot chick falls in love with him and he doesn't even have to alter his pathetic personality.

What's especially frustrating is that Charlotte is a very well written character and Winona Ryder does a fine acting job. There's a dramatic and emotional integrity to Charlotte. She's not just a pawn that gets moved around the plot to service Evan's story. She has reasons for what she does, she's aware of those reasons but she's not controlled by them. There are several points in the movie where Charlotte does the exact opposite of what you usually see from the "girlfriend role" and it's a little thrilling when it happens. For her part, Ryder is more than up to the demands of this role. She really captures the uneasy swirl of strength and weakness, confidence and desperation, self-awareness and self-deception a woman would have to have to be attracted to a guy like Evan. It also helps a lot that Ryder's physical attractiveness here as a grown woman equals all of the sublime cuteness of her youth.

There's also a few laughs to be hand from the interaction of Evan and Abel (Ray Romano),a misanthropic client who insists on hanging out and talking with Evan like they were friends. Abel's not much more than a collection of funny lines of dialog and, again, there's no lesson or real point to their relationship because the story persists in denying the appalling essence of what Evan is doing for Abel.

You can probably guess that Charlotte eventually learns that Evan wrote her brother's suicide note, imperiling their relationship, and that easy-to-predict point is where the film implodes from the pressure of fundamentally flawed writing. After Charlotte finds out what he did and is rightfully repulsed, Evan tries to redeem himself to her and the audience by explaining that her brother had advanced cancer, was in serious pain and only wanted to be at peace. That's supposed to at least partly ennoble Evan in the eyes of Charlotte and the viewer. It doesn't do that at all, for two very simple reasons.

1. Evan spends their entire relationship lying to Charlotte. So, when he says Charlotte's brother had cancer, the first reaction from both Charlotte and the audience should be that it's just another lie. That very logical and reasonable response clearly never occurred to writer/director Geoffrey Haley. Not only does Charlotte never question it, but Haley never offers up any evidence to her or the audience that Evan is telling the truth.

2. If Evan is telling the truth, it only magnifies what a disgusting person he is. In the story, Charlotte is really torn up over her brother's death. Yet even though Evan is confronted with the human trauma enabled by his passive acquiescence to suicide, he still doesn't realize the horror that he's part of. Evan (and obviously Haley) thinks that because Charlotte's brother killed himself for a supposedly good reason, it somehow justifies what Evan does.

I don't know what to make of this film. One aspect of it is very good, but the rest of it is so bad that I can't really believe that one filmmaker is responsible for it all. It's like trying to comprehend how George Lucas could create both Darth Vader and Jar Jar Binks. Tragically, The Last Word is mostly Jar Jar…and does anyone need to be told not to watch more Jar Jar?

So-so. Was initially interesting but drifts from a point and fizzles out. Could have been profound, but ultimately wasn't.

Good to see Winona Ryder, in a rare decent 2000s role for her (good to see Winona Ryder, full stop). Solid performance from her. Wes Bentley is a bit irritating in his role, but maybe it is because the longer the movie went on, the more I disliked his character.