But what is wrong with so many movie reviewers? How could you see this movie and not notice that it isn’t a comedy? How can you report on the film not as it is, but as it is marketed? Funny? Yes, at moments hilariously so. A comedy? No!

The Break-Up is worth seeing, but it doesn’t fit easily into any category. You can’t really call it a dramedy, either. It is an oddly serious film with a definite downward spiral between the two main characters. The title should be a clue, though titles are often deceiving. The Break-Up is about a break-up. It is a heartbreaking little movie about two people who don’t make it as a couple.

I did laugh quite a bit while watching The Break-Up. But the laughs happen away from the relationship between Gary and Brooke (Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston). They provide significant comic relief, and it is a relief because it is painful and sad watching two people break up.

Gary and Brooke meet at a Cubs game. Brooke is with a guy, but that doesn’t stop Gary, or even slow him down much. And when Gary gets wound up, he is charming and unstoppable. Except for this one baseball game, we don’t hear anything else between Brooke and Gary that sounds fun.

We do see a montage of stills from the happy times between these two. And you’ve hardly ever seen a pair of people look so delightfully happy together. Just the two of them, or with a larger group of friends, smiling at the camera. And wow, are these two an attractive pair. Yikes. They are beautiful people.

The fact that Aniston and Vaughn are romantically involved and being coy about it must have contributed to the studio’s decision to be so relentlessly cutesy with the marketing for this film.

Yes, gentlemen, I know, Angelina is the sexiest woman on the planet, and Brad could hardly help himself for noticing, but Aniston is so lovely it’s hard to imagine many men unwilling to put up with a lot to get the smiles she gives Vaughn in those snapshots. And ladies, I know tastes differ, but Vaughn could easily make you say “Brad who?”

In The Break-Up, Aniston gets paid to flush the unpleasantness of her real life break-up in a therapeutic, public display. I can only hope she has come out of her real life travail as successfully as she weathers the disappointments in The Break-Up.

The troubles between Brooke and Gary begin innocently enough at a dinner party for the families of the couple. While Brooke cooks, Gary plays video games and hasn’t brought home enough lemons for the centerpiece. The romance has cooled, and playing house isn’t quite as smooth and satisfying as it once was.

The dinner party just contributes to the trouble, reminding both Brooke and Gary that they disagree about certain things. John Michael Higgins, playing Brooke’s brother Richard, gets the funniest bit in the film, as he waxes eloquent about his a cappella group, the Tone Rangers.

The post-dinner party fight becomes so heated that Brooke breaks up with Gary, which she regrets, at least at first. The rest of The Break-Up is a series of incidents with both Brooke and Gary trying to figure out if the break-up fits. They turn to friends and family for advice and to whine. There is plenty of whining. And that is uncomfortable.

But the friends and family are what will see these two through and keep the film from being too much about how awful it is when love goes wrong.

First among these is Jon Favreau. He’s Gary’s friend, Johnny. He likes Brooke, but he’s his friend’s best defender when things go wrong. I loved seeing Favreau and Vaughn together and bantering like they did in Swingers. It’s 10 years later, and they’re much chubbier but still overgrown boys capable of genuine loyalty and silliness.

Cole Hauser and Vincent Donofrio play Gary’s brothers. Together, they are the Three Brothers tour company. They give bus tours of Chicago and have grand dreams to expand the business. Hauser’s lecture to Gary about how times have changed in the two years he hasn’t been dating is funny. But Donofrio, in his ill-fitting suit, cleaning his ears as he lectures his brother on financial issues, is priceless.

Jason Bateman, friend and realtor, is also extremely hilarious, counseling Brooke and Gary that they need to sell their condo, when it becomes clear that the pair are not getting back together and that they can’t make it even as roommates.

On Brooke’s side, Joey Lauren Adams is Brooke’s good friend. But with two kids, she has limited sympathy for Brooke’s games to make Gary jealous. Brooke’s boss, Marilyn Dean, the owner of the gallery where Brooke works, has given her this advice: Gary will want Brooke back the minute he sees her hot self with another guy.

Judy Davis plays Marilyn Dean. She’s a female version of Denny Crane, William Shatner’s character on “Boston Legal.” Davis is wonderfully self-involved and, though her initial advice to Brooke is neither satisfying nor effective, Marilyn Dean does give Brooke the support she needs when Brooke has finally made up her mind to get away.

Sometimes it’s just too late and things are too damaged to be repaired. That’s the message of The Break-Up. Not a typical Hollywood story line. But Brooke and Gary live and learn. That’s what happens to people. I’m not saying that makes The Break-Up a realistic movie, but it makes it a lot more interesting and idiosyncratic a movie than a handful of typical romantic comedies.