Break-Up, The
The Break-Up isn’t the tit-for-tat bitter revenge comedy the trailers may have fooled you into believing. It’s actually a pretty down-beat look at the step-by-step disintegration of a relationship. The only moments I could even tell were supposed to be funny was the verbal sparring between Vince Vaughn and his former Swingers buddy Jon Favreau (and an overly long ‘crazy families’ dinner scene that’s just plain odd), but other than that the film is full of awkward moments, screaming matches, psychological head games, and the usual stubbornness and stupidness that keeps couples from forgiving each other and mending their ways. It’s hard to know what to make of all of this. If it wasn't Vince Vaughn alongside Jennifer Aniston here, and with a bit more restraint from the occasional attempted wackiness, this film could have very well been considered a straight drama – similar to a lot of the other work Aniston has done post-Friends like The Good Girl. As it stands it will probably end up finding its way onto the Comedy shelf at your local video store, but it will leave a lot of disappointed people. Me, I personally thought that while The Break-Up wasn’t particularly good, that it at times tried to be more than a goofy he said/she said rom-com was at least admirable and a great deal more interesting than other relationship films, especially with its decidedly non-Hollywood ending.