Film & Cinema | Cinema Reviews
Film review: Going the distance
The story of a boy and a girl who are forced to stay apart
- Washington Post
- Published: 00:00 September 23, 2010
- Image Credit: Rex Features
- A scene from the movie 'Going the distance'
Cast: Drew Barymore, Justin Long, Christina Applegate, Charlie Day
Director: Nanette Burstein
Genre: Comedy/romance
Rating: 18
Going the Distance is a movie in the tradition of American Pie and There's Something About Mary. It's funny and kind of sweet, if not quite up to the level of Judd Apatow's oeuvre in the burgeoning field of R-rated comedies with heart. You will laugh and blush in equal measure. You will not, however, read any of its best lines here - due to obvious reasons.
What I can tell you is this: Drew Barrymore and Justin Long make one cute couple. Whether or not the actors' on-again-off-again real-life romance helped their performances as lovers frustrated by geography - he's in Manhattan, she's in San Francisco - it's clear they have chemistry.
ET's girlfriend and the Mac Guy ooze a laid-back, goofy charm through their pore-less skin. They're a modern-day Hepburn and Grant. This serves them well in the first fictional feature from documentarian Nanette Burstein (American Teen), working from a script by fellow newcomer Geoff LaTulippe. Yeah, the story is written by a guy but Burstein brings a wise, gentle touch to the proceedings.
There's a tenderness that softens even the crudest moments. And the warmth of the stars would smooth over any beginning film-maker's missteps. When record-company flunky Garrett (Long) meets newspaper intern Erin (Barrymore) one summer in New York, there's no expectation that the relationship will go anywhere.
He's on the rebound, having just broken up with someone that night. And she's about to leave town to return to journalism school on the West Coast. It's just a brief spell of indulgence, right? Not in the movies. This one is no exception. Cue the substance-induced, millennial-generation bonding followed by a standard-issue falling-in-love montage featuring surf frolicking. Fast-forward to the airport, where they suddenly announce that they're crazy about each other.
Crazy is right. Neither makes enough money to visit more frequently than once every few months. So, between the occasional holiday weekend, they have to resort to phone conversations, late-night Skype-ing and texting each other every five minutes, much to the annoyance of Garrett's friends, played, with deadpan hilarity by Saturday Night Live's Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Christina Applegate and Jim Gaffigan round out the excellent supporting cast, as Erin's germophobic big sister and her jaded husband, who take in Erin while she's finishing her studies - and who, in one indelible scene, catch Garrett and Erin enjoying themselves in their dining room. This sight is one I will not soon forget. Such are the conventions of the modern romantic comedy. Get used to it, I say, or give up on the genre. But maybe not just yet.
What is perhaps most surprising about Going the Distance is not its contemporaneity. Sure, it's filled with the usual jokes, casual relationships and the glorification of prolonged adolescence so common to the Apatovian canon. But in its heart of hearts, it's as old-fashioned as they come.
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