{"id":5732,"date":"2010-09-03T00:00:35","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T04:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=5732"},"modified":"2010-09-13T22:31:02","modified_gmt":"2010-09-14T02:31:02","slug":"going-the-distance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=5732","title":{"rendered":"Going the Distance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There are many critics who like to feign anger or moral outrage towards a movie. That\u2019s purely an emotional reaction and not an intellectual one; the truth is that very few films are worthy of any sort of ire, it\u2019s just a terrific way to get attention by piling on the derogatory snark. Exceptions do occur, especially when our particular profession is used or detailed incorrectly. Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper complained about the way that TV news journalists were presented in Life or Something Like It<\/em> and Money Talks <\/em>(though the latter was during the Siskel era). They\u2019re not wrong, from the standpoint of reality, which both films somewhat purport to represent, the inaccuracy is sort of staggering, especially Charlie Sheen\u2019s reporter in Money Talks<\/em>, who is so incompetent and unprepared, constantly editorializing on the fly, that he never would have been hired in the first place. But both films, a romantic comedy and an action comedy, respectively, are pretty innocuous, and their forgettable mediocrity transcends any obvious details they got wrong.*<\/p>\n

Then why did Nanette Burstein\u2019s Going the Distance <\/em>infuriate me so much?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s an innocuous romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long trying to sustain a long distance relationship. Their characters don\u2019t have much personality, the cast made up of comedians and reliable lowbrow comedy veterans like Christina Applegate, Jim Gaffigan, Jason Sudekis, Rob Riggle, Ron Livingston, etc., and the jokes are a mix of bumping-into-things slapstick and dirty versions of sitcom lines. Justin Long\u2019s friends Charlie Day and Jason Sudekis have no lives of their own, they live vicariously through Long\u2019s relationships, never discussing anything else.** Their scenes are just padding between those featuring Barrymore and Long getting to know each other through their mutual love of the classic arcade game Centipede and copious musical montages (the only bit of dialogue that isn\u2018t meant ironically? \u201cBoy, the time went by so fast\u201d). Of course montages in a romantic comedy are both an easy way to show the passing of time and more importantly, avoiding writing clever dialogue.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And to suggest that Long and Barrymore\u2019s characters would say anything remotely clever is wishful thinking, their entire relationship is based on contrivances (and the fact that the opening scene has Long being dumped by his girlfriend because he didn\u2019t know that when she said she didn\u2019t want a birthday present, she didn\u2019t really mean it, wasn\u2019t this an old joke in the 1960s?). He\u2019s a flunkie for a record company and she\u2019s a too-old-and-aware-of-it intern for a NYC tabloid paper. She has only six weeks with Long before she has to return to San Francisco and her graduate degree.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We think that the collapse of the newspaper and record industries will be a backdrop, but in fact it turns out to be the entire false crisis with which this relationship is threatened. Barrymore wants badly to write for a NY paper and Long loves NY and wants to stay, even if he hates his job. Why it matters what major city she writes in is never dealt with, unless it\u2019s the idea of a NY aura, and he certainly can do his job in San Francisco or LA or since he\u2019s so unhappy, he can switch careers. Of course, if he did, not only would there be no movie, there\u2019d be no excuse for the hipster musical posters that litter his bedroom. Bedroom is a bit of a stretch he\u2019s so financially strapped he has to live in the living room of a one bedroom apartment with Charlie Day, with walls so thin they can hear each other thinking.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This scene is one of the strangest visually. It looks like "stolen" footage, at the same time as looking like poor green screen matting.<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite the optimum living arrangements, Long\u2019s not willing to wait tables like Barrymore is, so she\u2019s offered the obvious option of giving up her dream so he can baby-sit the boy bands he loathes. But the fact is, even with the constant exterior landmark stock footage of NYC, nothing in the movie itself is tied to NY. The film is entirely studio-set bound or street footage shot so tightly that we can\u2019t see what\u2019s surrounding the characters. In other words, if Going the Distance<\/em> had been shot in Canada, you wouldn\u2019t notice anything different (it probably was). Of course, if the characters were to acknowledge their Canadian homes, again, there\u2019d be no movie. Can you imagine this life-altering argument?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Barrymore: \u201cI really want to be a reporter, especially in Toronto. But I have job opportunities in Vancouver, in the same, financially doomed industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long: \u201cYou should come live in Toronto, even if there is no work here. And besides, I have my low-paying job and my tiny apartment that I pay too much rent for, not to mention my intrusive roommate. They do not have such things in Vancouver.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And yes, I\u2019m aware that I haven\u2019t addressed why Going the Distance <\/em>made me as angry as any movie I\u2019ve seen since Napoleon Dynamite<\/em><\/span><\/a>. But in a way, with the above issues, I have, because a movie is made up of details, and this movie gets all the details distractingly wrong, to the point where things you should let go, become eyesores. For instance:<\/p>\n