The Break-Up - Palm Beach Post movie review

'The Break-Up' makes more than its characters miserable

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

The object of most "date night" movies is to make you feel as romantic as the blissful characters. With The Break-Up, filmgoers can feel that despite any flaws they might have in their own relationships, they have it better than the belligerent, bickering duo whose match is disintegrating.

Universal Pictures

'The Break-Up'

The verdict: Aniston and Vaughn get on each other's nerves, as well as ours.

Director: Peyton Reeds
Starring: Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston, Jon Favreau, Joey Lauren Adams, Ann-Margret
Run time: 106 minutes
Release date: June 2, 2006
Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, some nudity and language.
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Certainly, Brooke Meyers (Jennifer Aniston) and Gary Grobowski (Vince Vaughn) test the theory that opposites attract. She is a Chicago art-gallery worker with cultured tastes, and he is a tour guide whose idea of a great night's activity is wearing out his thumbs playing video games. You have to wonder why they are together — and even screenwriters Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender are apparently stumped.

For, after an opening clumsy attempt by Gary to hit on Brooke at a Cubs game, the movie settles for courtship shorthand, showing them somehow growing close in a photo montage over the credits. By the time the movie really begins, they are sharing a condo apartment, and his irresponsible nature is getting on her nerves.

When Gary fails to pitch in and help with a dinner party for their families, and then plops himself in front of the television right afterward, she starts fuming. Trying to get him to grow up, Brooke threatens a breakup, but the condo is too valuable for either of them to vacate.

So they squabble a lot, he remains childish and she soon stoops to his level, attempting to make him jealous with a few dead-end dates. Presumably we are supposed to find Gary lovable, but instead he is simply a clod, and Brooke's efforts to save their relationship are so misguided that we soon turn off to both.

Those who are tabloid savvy know that the potential attraction of The Break-Up is to see the latest Hollywood love couple on screen together, even if it is in this hopelessly sour vehicle. Aniston and Vaughn may be an item in real life, but you'd never know it from this movie, which perversely has a zero affection quotient.

Vaughn's character is not far off from the guy he played in Wedding Crashers last year and he has plenty of opportunities to deliver the kind of verbal riffs and rants that he is known for. Aniston is also in familiar territory with her unlucky-in-love prototype, but the two of them might as well be from Mars and Venus, as pop psychology puts it.

Director Peyton Reed (Down With Love) fares far better with his supporting cast, especially Vaughn's Swingers costar Jon Favreau as Gary's occasionally wise bartender pal. Late in the movie, long after we have stopped caring about the central couple, Favreau steals the movie with a comic routine about knocking off Brooke's latest potential beau. Also scoring comic points is Judy Davis as the egotistical owner of the gallery where Brooke toils.

John Michael Higgins (Best in Show) also upstages the stars as Brooke's brother, whose passion is an a cappella singing ensemble known as the Tone Rangers. Wasted in sketchy roles without any payoff are Ann-Margret as Brooke's mother and Joey Lauren Adams as her best friend, ever ready with advice jargon.

The impulse is to try to admire a movie that so goes against the tide of Hollywood sentiment and formula. But minutes after The Break-Up begins, you will surely lose interest in Aniston and Vaughn's characters and probably start rooting for them to get some therapy and move on to making other partners miserable.