OK, the movie's called The Break-Up, so it's not surprising that it's mainly about the break-up of its central couple, but that poses a structural problem that the movie doesn't solve. We see virtually nothing of Brooke and Gary (Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn) as a happy couple -- their 2-year relationship is compressed to a series of snapshots during the opening credits -- so when they start fighting, we don't like or care about either of them.
And since they're not just fighting, but deliberately going to great lengths to hurt one another, we're seeing them at their worst, which only makes it harder to give a crap. That can work, if the movie's willing to completely commit to a very dark sense of humor -- The War of the Roses, for instance, got away with it for the most part -- but The Break-Up wants to be loved as a sweet-natured romantic comedy, and wants us to love its characters. The result is a tone that yo-yos back and forth from slapstick to emotional brutality, and while each extreme works moderately well in its own right, the writing doesn't manage the transition between extremes very well.
But by the time the characters get to their moments of redemption -- each of them gets one, an attempt to salvage the relationship they've spent the entire movie trying to destroy -- I hated both of them so damned much that I was actively rooting for them to fail, and for both of them to spend the rest of their lives alone and miserable.
There are some funny performances scattered around the edges of the movie. Aniston and Vaughn each have a best-pal sidekick, played by Joey Lauren Adams and Jon Favreau, and they're both very charming; unfortunately, the chemistry between either of those pairs (Vaughn and Favreau especially) is stronger than the chemistry between Aniston and Vaughn. Justin Long, an actor who I've never much liked before, is funny as Aniston's flamboyant idiot co-worker; Judy Davis is all brittle edges and sharp clavicles as their boss, a self-absorbed gallery owner. John Michael Higgins gets the movie's best scene; he's an a cappella singer who drags an entire dinner party into joining him in a horribly embarassing performance.
That scene reminded me that director Peyton Reed has always had a knack for staging musical numbers; think of the marching-band opening from Bring It On, or the McGregor/Zellweger production number over the closing credits of Down With Love. I'd really love to see him go to town on a witty musical. I wonder what he'd do with Sondheim's Into the Woods, for instance.
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