Peyton Reed's The Break-Up
The Break-Up begins at a baseball game where Gary (Vince Vaughn), a motor-mouth Cubs fan, hits on Brooke (Jennifer Aniston), a woman on a date with another guy whom he notices because she's sitting between him and the hot dog vendor. Gary is overbearing but Brooke couldn't ask for a guy to fasten more attention on her. So his hopped-up patter works, as we see in a series of still photos under the credits showing the progression of their relationship as they party, meet each other's friends, join a couples' bowling team, and move in together. When the movie proper starts, they've been together two years and have reached the point where she thinks that he takes her for granted and he thinks that all she does is nag him.
They're both right, and if that isn't bad enough, when Brooke says she's done with the relationship, hoping to shock Gary into listening to her, and he takes her at her word, they begin to fight like overgrown children. Neither one can afford the mortgage loan payments on their condo alone, so they both stay and mark out their territory, squabble, try to make each other jealous, etc. It's reminiscent of a screwball divorce comedy—e.g., The Awful Truth (1937), in which Cary Grant and Irene Dunne each tries, successfully, to break up the other's new engagement—but without charm or flair or elegance. Yet while The Break-Up is as grating as spending time with bickering couples is in life (and, as a friend has to tell Brooke and Gary, it is very grating), the movie doesn't have the veracity of naturalism.
The movie could conceivably work if it viewed Brooke and Gary's immaturity from an ironic remove. This is especially true if Brooke's manipulation and Gary's defensive hostility are supposed to be funny. Brooke's confidante Addie (Joey Lauren Adams) periodically suggests such a perspective, but the moviemakers don't realize that it damns the bulk of their material. The Break-Up wouldn't have to be as antically depraved as The War of the Roses (1989), just somewhat more impersonal. Instead, it combines a naked desire to please the audience with a try-anything approach of the kind that made Wedding Crashers such a desperate stab at entertainment. The material involving Brooke's closeted gay brother, for instance, is embarrassing and the material involving the art gallery where she works (for Judy Davis and with Justin Long) excruciating.
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Article comments
1 - Chris Evans
Disagree with you about Aniston. She's an incredibly underrated actress. Yeah, she's no Nicole Kidman--you won't see her playing Virginia Woolf anytime soon, but when she's in the right role she's golden. I thought she was great in Friends With Money as well as in The Good Girl which is one of my favorite films of all time.
2 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment, Chris. I figured Aniston couldn't have made a zillon dollars per episode on Friends for 10 years w/o picking up a lot of fans. Actually, I like her better than Nicole Kidman, who strikes me as waxy and pose-y. I like Aniston in her range, it just strikes me as a small-screen range. The audience with which I saw Friends With Money clearly responded to McDormand more than to Aniston.
3 - Chris Evans
Lmao! I loved Frances McDormand. She's brill in EVERYTHING.
4 - Alan Dale
Best story about McDormand: early on, when she would get auditions for movie roles that specified the character had a full figure, she would show up with a pair of fake tits in a shopping bag.
5 - Chris Evans
Dude, that's fucking hilarious!
6 - Joan Rivers
I couldn't agree with you more, Aniston has no range. She is more worried about her hair not being perfect than transforming fully into her character. She has never had any kind of acting ability, she should of been a hair dresser instead. She is cute but that's all she has going for her and that is slowly fading.
7 - Alan Dale
Ouch. Well, I like her a bit more than you do, but I certainly don't miss her between movies. And I never understood the appeal of Friends at all. Thanks for that energetic comment.