WhatzUp

The Break-Up
by Derek Neff

What is it that attracts two dissimilar souls to each other in the first place? And, once together, how do these people ever know for sure if they have what it takes to stay together for the rest of their lives? These potentially compelling questions are not even remotely explored in the new comedy The Break-Up, starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston and directed by Peyton Reed. There is a really good bit involving a men's choir and an old Yes song, though.

One night, after hosting a disastrous dinner party in their condo, Gary and Brooke have an explosive argument. Gary didn't buy enough lemons for the centerpiece, and then he refused to help her set the table before the guests arrived. For his part, Gary had a really super hard day at work, and he just wants to have a few relaxing minutes alone with his Playstation. Brooke ends the argument by telling Gary she can't stand to live one more minute with Gary. (It's a PG13 movie, so lots of "dammits"and "hells" get volleyed back and forth, but not much worse. In other words, it sounds like no argument you've ever heard in real life.)

The Break-Up is a comedy that thinks it's a drama at the most inopportune times, but the dramatic elements only serve to drag down the potential comedy. Many of the jokes fall flat because director Reed (along with screenwriters Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender) are intent on wheedling a bit of heartbreak from a situation that isn't believable to begin with.

Like a forgotten episode from a cheesy 1980s sitcom that got canned mid-season, the entire situation is predicated on a simple misunderstanding, one that could be cleared up by two mature adults in 30 seconds flat. Furthermore, once they do split, the two ex-lovers are spiteful, childish, deceptive and unwilling to yield anything to each other until it is too late. (Well, okay, maybe that part is realistic.)

The problem doesn't really lie in the chemistry between Vaughn and Aniston, however lackluster it may be. (I really wish the gun-shy national tabloids would at least discuss the possibility, however remote, that Vaughn and Aniston are an item in real life.) Vaughn's character Gary is an inveterate smart-ass, and nobody does smart-ass better than Vaughn, so if anybody could take some of the lines here and make them sing it would be Vaughn. And while I admire Aniston as an actress, she's never really allowed to showcase her talents, so busily is her character escalating a situation that could easily have been solved after a five-minute discussion. On the other hand, whenever we see Gary obliviously blasting away on his Playstation, you not only want her to leave him for good, you're fully willing to provide her with a weapon, an alibi and a getaway car should she decide to do worse.