Contradicting Popular Opinion:
An Enquiry Concerning Why Your Favorite Movie Sucks
The Break-Up
Today, we’ll visit the Jennifer Aniston/ Vince Vaughn money machine known as The Break-Up, where mismatched couple Brooke and Gary break-up, and then stay broken up some more. As you all know, I’m a positive, happy-go-lucky sort of fella. This being the case, I’m going to start this column talking about some of the things The Break-Up has going for it.
Thing #1 – A lot of this movie was filmed across the street from me at the armory. I have voted in the same building where they built the condo set.
Thing #2 – Unlike several other movies set in Chicago, The Break-Up doesn’t make any glaring geographical errors. Nobody drives the wrong way on Lake Shore Drive. Nobody walks into MSI and out of the Field. Geographically speaking, the movie is competent.
Thing #3 – Vince Vaughn’s anti-charisma kicks in about halfway into the flick. Vaughn has this natural ability to be so over-whelmingly annoying and unlikeable, that the pendulum swings around the other way in an Ed Woodish sort of way. If you need an oxymoron, we’ll call it endearingly irritating.
Thing #4 – There is a funny line about Pollocks with no future.
That’s all I could come up with on the plus side. We’ll visit the dark half.
Criticism #1 – The movie is mis-labeled as a romantic-comedy. First off, it isn’t romantic. We never see our “romantic” leads as a happy couple. Nothing really happens suggesting any sort of romance. Secondly, it isn’t a comedy. Traditionally speaking, something is called a comedy when it has a happy ending. While the ending of The Break-Up isn’t depressing, and might be for the best, it is far from a “happy ending.” In the colloquial sense, The Break-Up isn’t a comedy because it is only intermittently funny.
Criticism #2 – I don’t see how these people got together, or rather, why these two got together. The opening of the movie shows that Gary spots Brooke at a Cubs game. Vaughn buys the complete stranger Aniston a hot dog, and hits on her in front of her date. It’s strikingly creepy, more so than anything he did with the Norman Bates character in the superfluous Psycho remake. If one were to view the scene with no prior knowledge of the film, one would be drawn to the inescapable conclusion that it was in fact some sort of turbulent psychological thriller.
But I guess some ladies like alarmingly oversized guys awkwardly and shamelessly flirting with them at sporting events. Although, normally in movies, these women end up raped, with pieces of their flesh packed into hefty bags and left out in the desert.
Criticism #3 – The relationship between Brooke Meyers (Aniston) and Gary Grobowski (Vaughn) never really makes sense. Despite actually dating, our two actors have remarkably little onscreen chemistry. We never see the characters as a happy couple, and it is never particularly clear what maintained this relationship in the first place. She’s needy and manipulative; he’s oblivious, inconsiderate and blunt. Her tastes appear exclusively highbrow; his are exclusively lowbrow. The characters have virtually nothing in common, and without scenes of them working as a couple, it is hard to imagine how such a thing would at all be successful.
Criticism #4 – Justin Long is in the movie, yet inexplicably does not get hit in the head with a dodgeball. Justin Long makes getting hit by a projectile funny. It doesn’t have to be a dodgeball, but really somebody should have been chucking something at this kid’s head.
Criticism #5 – This movie contains flagrant and gratuitous use of Joey Lauren Adams.
Criticism #6 – Due to both the script and direction, most of the characters in this film appear fairly psychotic. At the very least, a good number of them suffer from Disassociative Identity Disorder. For instance, when we meet Jon Favreau’s character, he is a mono-syllabic jackass. Later on, he serves as a fatuous and paranoid thug. Then, in a key scene, he is insightful and sensitive.
Now, don’t get me wrong, you can have a character with all of those qualities. The problem here is that there is no overlap. In one scene, the character is A; in another scene he is B. There is no scene in which he is both A and B. There exists discreet separation of the personalities.
The character of Marilyn Dean (the boss of Jennifer Aniston’s character) doesn’t fare much better.
She starts self-centered and distant. Then she is a wicked taskmaster set to fire any of her employees on a whim. By the end of the film, she is a generous mother-figure. The only thing that seemed to bring about this rather sizable change was Jennifer Aniston waxing her pubes.
The leads don’t escape this trap either. Vince Vaughn’s character manages a complex and nuanced understanding of the history and geography of Chicago, but makes numerous “comical” errors such as referring to the Sistine Chapel as the Sixteenth Chapel.
Brooke Meyers isn’t so much one character, but rather a large collection of female characters connected by the fact that they are all played by Jennifer Aniston. (Sort of a Melinda and Melinda thing.)
Criticism #7 – Despite being produced like a typical Hollywood widget, The Break-Up seems ignorant of standard 3 act structure. I tried to think of the film in terms of acts. This is what I came up with:
ACT 1: Gary and Brooke break up.
ACT 2: Gary and Brooke are broken up.
ACT 3: Gary and Brooke remain broken up.
Plotwise, this isn’t very deep. A relationship, which we are never given substantial reasons to care about, ends over the course of 105 minutes. There is the minor diversion of a prank war for rights to their condo, but otherwise nothing much progresses throughout the majority of the film.
Criticism #8 – The talents of Jennifer Aniston don’t really merit a film career. She has been acceptable twice in movie roles (as Hogarth’s mom in The Iron Giant, and as the superfluous love-interest in Office Space). She doesn’t have much range. She’s not a skilled dramatic actress. In comedic terms she’s not particularly funny. Of all the Friends, she is the least talented, yet she seems to have the most marketable movie career.
Criticism #9 – The boom microphone is visible in no less than three scenes.
Criticism #10 – The movie tells me that the bag contains three lemons. When I look closely at the bag, there are four lemons. It’s kinda like when Captain Picard was tortured by the Cardassians. “There are four lights!” Basically, what I’m saying is that The Break-up is Cardassian propaganda.
Logically, how could you deny that fact?
OUTRO
I’ve gotten a couple of good responses to the
Worst Vampire Movie Ever!
question of last week. By all means, keep sending in suggestions. I don’t quite know what I’m going to do with it yet, but such is the way with this CPO.
A note though, try to keep suggestions to films that got a notable theatrical, or even a sizable DVD release at Blockbuster. Id est, if your cousin Bob filmed some footage of Grandma with Dracula teeth, it’s not going on the list.
