Movie Review (2): The Break-Up

By Anne Brodie Jun 3, 2006, 12:57 GMT

Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston star in The Break-Up, which starts where most romantic comedies end: after boy and girl have met, fallen in love, moved in to start their happily-ever-after...and right when they wind up driving each other crazy. Pushed to the breaking-up point after their latest "why can\'t you do this one little thing for me?" argument, art dealer Brooke (Aniston) calls it quits with her boyfriend, Gary ...more

Sometimes a movie just hurts.

So much anticipation from Team Aniston and Team Jolie!

All box office bases are covered for this much anticipated anti-romantic comedy.

But all that buzz can’t save us from the truth.

The truth is that ‘The Break-Up’ is a heartless mess.

Some will watch Aniston the Jilted, play real life pain for comedy, and while she deserves some slack, it ain’t coming from me.

The film was shot during her breakup with Brad, blah, blah, blah.

No one’s coming to see her act, we know it runs the gamut of here to the corner of my desk, but perhaps she could show us some new found strength. She seems to have learned nothing – those same five expressions wear even thinner, as she flails through her characterization, loosely parallel to her off-screen life.

I’m floored that Vince Vaughn – a sarcastic he-man if there ever was one – has conceived and written a chick flick. It’s predictably mean spirited but where’s the reckless joy? 

His character can’t learn and that’s just sad. It’s A Seinfeld episode without the laughs and charm. Where’s our connection to him?

Two dynamic Vinces co-star - Vaughn and D’Onofrio. They could have set the screen on fire, because they are intense, ultra-cool and tall, but their potential is killed early and decisively.

Breakups are unfunny and gut-wrenching, and Vaughn has tried to play it for laughs, celebrating vitriol and discomfort with quick quips and a touch of the lash. 

Hilarious sequences make the first two acts sing, but something diabolical happens. Humour was somehow erased, in favour of a brutally unfunny, weepy third act.

No fair. It was never meant to be a tender, sentimental story, so why morph it into a witless bore? I don’t want to cry with or for them - I want shock and awe from Vaughn and fire from Aniston.

Vaughn’s motor-mouth delivery mirrors the thoughts and fears running through his head as his relationship disintegrates.

He can’t control them. He hasn’t a clue what to do because he’s a bad boyfriend and suffers from arrested development. He’s like the guys on TV commercials who can’t fix anything, cook anything or do anything, who are smiled upon by smug wives, who do everything better.

Isn’t it time someone dealt with that? The emasculation trend is alive and well in ‘The Break-Up’.

The anti-romantic comedy label, as trumpeted by studio flacks, has been poorly served. A romantic comedy is a time-honoured, beloved cinematic genre that really doesn’t need re-tooling. Given enough air and light, the anti- romantic comedy works. But here it’s DOA, from aggravated bad-scripitis.

‘The Break-Up’ is a rudderless spew-fest. If that’s what this anti-romantic comedy genre is, then let’s end it now.

Which geniuses sat down and green-lit this one?

Perhaps they’d seen the delightful ‘The Wedding Crashers’ and hoped VV would follow through in kind.  What they got was a bloated mess, an empty sales job, a fake.

Vincent D’Onofrio, so vivid in ‘Law and Order: Criminal Intent’ was likely looking to lighten his image as a shy, ineffectual accountant, but what a spectacular and shameful waste of this man’s gift.

Jason Bateman was a relief as the slick real estate friend who manipulates the breakup to make a little cash; I believed him and even like and care about him.

I care more that his deal goes through than I do about the damn breakup.

Jon Favreau is nearly Laurence Olivier by comparison with the film. He’s the plain spoken friend who lays out what’s what’. Doesn’t Favreau always save Vaughn?

'The Break-Up' needs more than the kind and caring ministrations of an intelligent friend to bring it back from the dead.

Opened wide USA June 2nd   MPAA: PG13 for sexual content, some nudity and language