| Bilgi : The Break-Up is a romantic comedy that
is neither romantic nor particularly funny. To some degree,
this is intentional, since the story concerns the end of a
relationship rather than the beginning of one; indeed, the
filmmakers have called it an "anti-romantic comedy."
But even given that premise, this movie represents one huge
wasted opportunity.
Take the central relationship. Vince Vaughn
is a wisecracking guy's guy and Jennifer Aniston may well be
America's favorite girl next door until she is well past
retirement age, so the pairing of these two actors could have
resulted in that rare chick flick that appeals to male
moviegoers as much as the female ones. But surprisingly, the
two barely have any chemistry (no matter what the tabloids
might say about their offscreen exploits), and the film never
bothers to show us why their characters got together in the
first place.
Gary Grobowski (Vince Vaughn) and
Brooke Meyers (Jennifer Aniston), obviously before the
movie's title comes into play
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Granted, the film does show us how
they got together, sort of, as Gary Grobowski (Vaughn) spots
Brooke Meyers (Aniston) from a distance at a baseball game and
begins to woo her with his rat-a-tat, motor-mouthed charm.
Brooke happens to be with a man, and the intensity with which
Gary pursues her might have some women crying "Stalker!"—but
for some reason, Brooke loses the other guy and heads off with
Gary instead. Then the film fast-forwards to the present day.
Gary and Brooke co-own a condo; and, after a mildly awkward
dinner attended by both their families, a small disagreement
over cleaning up the dishes turns into a big shouting match,
and suddenly, just like that, they break up.
But the film never shows us why they
got together—that is, it never shows us what it was about the
personalities of these two people that made them seem like a
worthy match in the first place—and so, when Gary and Brooke
break up, we have no idea how to respond. Was their
relationship a mistake, in which case we should be glad to see
them go their separate ways? Or should we be mourning the end
of something good? And come to that, couples rarely break up
over a single bad day; there are usually many other straws on
the camel's back before that last one breaks it, and because
the film does not give us that broader context, we cannot help
but think that Gary and Brooke are over-reacting.
The lines clearly have been drawn
between Gary and Brooke
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At any rate, without some sort of back-story
to explain their present actions, both Gary and Brooke come
off looking rather petulant and unlikable—and that would be
fine, if The Break-Up were a black comedy about nasty
people doing nasty things to each other, like The War of
the Roses. But no, this movie doesn't have the guts to go
that far. Yes, Gary and Brooke—who both insist on staying in
the condo, she in the bedroom and he on the couch in the
living room—try increasingly desperate measures to drive each
other crazy or to make the other person jealous. But the small
acts of revenge are never all that vicious, and the
movie always comes back to the emotional pain that the
characters have caused each other. The movie, in a nutshell,
doesn't know whether it wants to laugh or cry.
The script, written by Jeremy Garelick and
Jay Lavender from a story they developed with Vaughn, doesn't
create characters so much as it falls back on stereotypes: men
are pigs who would rather drink beer and play video games all
day than do anything romantic, while women play
passive-aggressive head games and try to change the men in
their lives—and representatives of both genders, including
Gary's obnoxiously horny brother Lupus (Cole Hauser) and
Brooke's art-gallery boss Marilyn Dean (Judy Davis), agree
that the best thing to do after you have broken up with
someone is to have sex with some really hot stranger, just to
annoy your ex-partner. I can't recall whether Brooke's best
friend Maddie (Joey Lauren Adams) also gives voice to this
idea, but she's a mother of two with a really timid husband,
so she, too, represents exactly what Gary doesn't want
in a relationship.
Johnny O (Jon Favreau, right)
takes in a Cubs game with his best bud, Gary
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Aniston isn't given much to work with here.
One of Brooke's better plans to annoy Gary involves letting
her possibly-gay brother (John Michael Higgins) rehearse with
his acappella group in her bedroom—but it is
Higgins, not Aniston, who carries the scene, and the
relationship between these two siblings is never explored in
any way that might shed light on her character. The rest of
her family remains an even greater mystery to us.
Vaughn, not surprisingly, fares a little
better. The bad habits Gary displays at home are also causing
problems at the tour-bus company he runs with his brothers—one
of whom, Dennis (Vincent D'Onofrio), is not very bright, but
he does represent the practical stability and sense of
responsibility that Gary and Lupus lack. We can sense that a
change for the better in one part of Gary's life could have
positive effects in other areas, too.
Gary also has a pal in Johnny O, a bartender
played by Vaughn's old Swingers buddy Jon Favreau. One
of the film's funniest moments comes near the end, when Johnny
proposes a particularly drastic course of action and a nervous
Gary doesn't seem to know whether to take him seriously. The
comic timing and the repartee between these two actors
couldn't be better—Vaughn certainly has a better chemistry, if
that's the word, with Favreau than he does with Aniston—but it
is revealing that one of the film's bigger laughs depends on
the fact that, so late in the story, we still don't know these
characters all that well.
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