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Have you ever found yourself standing near a couple having a vicious, personal argument? Maybe they're strangers sitting near you in a restaurant. Maybe they're close friends of yours fighting at a party. No matter the scenario, your natural impulse usually is to bolt toward the nearest exit and escape the hostility, the accusations, the jealousy, and the raw, emotional turmoil that can spew from a strained relationship.
Going the Distance, a romantic comedy starring one-time lovers Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, actually asks us to pay for the privilege of sitting near just such a squabbling couple as they struggle through their long-distance relationship. It's as painful as the previously described situations, and I was compelled -- numerous times -- to flee the theater and escape this awkward, uncomfortable, and frequently irritating film.
Geoff LaTulippe's debut screenplay does flip traditional rom-com conventions as it tells the story of lovers trying to make their budding affair work from opposite coasts. Distance casts Barrymore as the film's overtly crass male persona, and the actress seems to enjoy living in her unkempt, raunchy skin. Her character, Erin, is an aspiring journalist who plays video games, chows down on Buffalo wings, smokes weed, plays football, and swears like a gangster rapper. But she's feminine enough to slow dance on the beach to The Cure's "Just Like Heaven." Because Coldplay would have been too cliché?
To balance Barrymore's testosterone, Distance hangs traditional "female" issues on Long's emasculated love interest, Garrett. A powerless New York record executive, he's ridiculed by his boorish buddies for ordering a salad because he's watching his weight. He visits a tanning salon with tragic results. He stresses over possible infidelity while Erin -- living thousands of miles away in California -- gets blitzed with a handsome male colleague.
How strange that Nanette Burstein, Oscar nominated for her directorial accomplishments in the documentary genre, produces such an unrealistic portrait of relationship woes when transitioning to narrative features. She shoots one scene - a dinner-date conversation - with low light and hand-held cameras to replicate a realistic feel. It's unconventional, and appreciated. Her team also conceives a wonderfully vibrant title sequence involving airplanes, maps, and text messages set to an impossibly catchy tune that I believe was "Either Way" by The Generationals. (If I'm wrong, please correct me, as I really liked the film's opening song and would love to download it.)
Where was Burstein's creativity over the rest of the film? When Barrymore and Long share scenes, they argue. When they're apart -- which is often -- they complain to friends and family about being sexually frustrated. There's a lot of sex talk in LaTulippe's script -- so much that it successfully diverts our attention away from the couple we're supposed to be hoping, you know, has sex. Characters are told to "eat a bowl of dicks." Jason Sudeikis of "Saturday Night Live" explains to Long that he's attracted to a female co-worker by saying, "I want to put things of me inside things of her." Charlie Day, who I hear is hilarious on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," has to have a serious conversation with Long while taking a dump. Even the very funny Christina Applegate is required to dry-hump the equally funny Jim Gaffigan, and somehow the act is shockingly unfunny.
In the end, Distance reveals itself to be a standard-issue, relationship-thin rom-com that hopes its potty mouth will distance itself from the competition. It never does.
