The Break-up. Directed by Peyton Reed. Starring Jennifer Aniston, Vince Vaughn, Ann-Margaret (Ouch, poor thing… not too close! Mighta gone a bridge too far, a film too many here), Vincent D’Onofrio (who looks enough like Vaughn to be his brother)… and that’s about it, aside from the usual sprinkling of wiseapple guypals and galpals for the protagonists.
Well, the big attraction here (actually, there are two—urf! urf!—and not that big, either) is the shot of Jennifer Aniston’s butt, a sly promise in the trailer to this flick (for an unflattering epiphany, you just might try renting Troy, where you can compare the nude shot of Brad’s umph umphs with the umphety umph, mutatis mutandis, of his partner in their alltoofamous realworld “break-up.” Then decide whose hangs the moon, so to speak…). Anyhow. It’s not much of a promise to my mind, especially when—hate to ruin it for you, but eight-fifty is eight-fifty—most of the sequence we peer—wistfully, I don’t say no—through a Vaseline-coated lens at a blurrydepth-of-field apparition sashaying off in misty fleshtone—OK, OK… golden, taut, radiant fleshtone, I admit it—specter that could be Jennifer… or Arnold, for that matter. Oddly, especially for us prurient, a series of increasingly revealing jean-and-tanktop outfits pretty much lays out any um, er… contours we may have formerly had mere inkling of, erases any mystery, anticlimaxes the revelation, and so we have to fall back on the actual movie for entertainment.
And that’s not an entirely vain hope. Vince Vaughn plays Gary, a silly but decent dumbo, tall marshmallow galoot of a guyguy (you know he’s a guyguy on account of he and a bud sit in the bar to drink beer outten a bottle as they ruminate on the incomprehensibility of sex or sit in the tier to root at a Sox game—film is set in Chicago—as they ruminate on the obtuseness of fee-males or sit in front of the teevee to play Grand Theft Auto as they ruminate on the ontological fallacy—phallus-y, actually… urf! urf!—you know, the same like all us guyguys do) who fasttalks Brooke (Aniston),high cheekbones, pouty lips, tight jeans Abishag and apprentice to the uptown world of Art (like all your Art floozies toss off that Oscar de Laurent sheath soon’s they get home from the gallery and squeeeeeeeeeze into their lowriders to chop up arugula for salad over Bordeaux variously pronounced…) into his life (and his shorts, we have to suppose). Does kinda ree-mind you of the old Dagwood and Blondie/Wilma and Fred/Lucy and Ricky bits where the fee-male wants the guy to take her to the ballet while the poor schlub just wants to watch the “game”… Anyhow. If you can’t see this unlikely pair coming unraveled a mile off, how about check out the summer courses at Community College? I’m thinking that seminar on “Otherness and Awakening in George Eliot” just the thing!
Vaughn can be funny, gets off a couple good lines, nails this amiable slob thing (go catch Wedding Crashers to follow him along the gamut from alpha to…beta, short itinerary but entertaining enough). Jennifer, Lord love her, just can’t. She’s trying for the puzzled bigscreen ingénue (variously pronounced, but most people settle for crwah-sawnt) but keeps fetching up the smallscreen Rachel. Andhere’s the dark secret of the teevee princesses: She can’t take a closeup any more than Carrie can from Sex and the City(Go rentFailure to Launch, for instance). That zoom lens is merciless on Sarah Jessica, on Jennifuffle, too. Look close—not too close!—and you’ll see: neither one is really pretty close up, both have um, er… worn. Somehow that small screen just doesn’t project the essential plainness of these two Sirens-for-a-Day, but scatter those pixels (or whatever the flockin’ things are…) across that great planar white wasteland at Cineplex, annnnnnd …ouch! The bored bubblegummer who dumps the pizza in front of you every day is fresher, creamier, more appetizing. And more human. Buuuuuuut, less susceptible likely to be fasttalked into your life (and shorts), sooooooo…
We stumble into the ménage just as Brooke discovers Gary’s a jerk. Not sure how she missed it in the first place, but it’s her decision to provoke a change in him that propels the “break-up” of the title, funny—or so the theory goes—since they must continue to live together in their co-owned co-dominium (Latin for “push-me-pull-you”). And that’s the fundamental flaw that propels the crumble here: this guy can’t change. If he does, he loses any charm he ever laid claim to. Sure enough, when—after the two kids slug it out for 105 minutes, in less and less funny schemes to avenge domestic affronts—Gary does become another person (hate to ruin it for you), he’sa pale,thin, vacuous cipher who can’t hold our attention on screen for a minute (which is just how long he gets). Actually, the contrite Gary (can contrition alone save a feller? Ask Father Murphy…)has shed weight bigtime for the final scene, as if… what do you think? …they Elmered on an alternate ending somehow?) The flickdoes end in a surprise, that is: a conclusion that doesn’t seem to fit our expectations for a light romantic comedy (it is titled after all The Break-Up), ugly intrusion of real life into the fantasy world where a fat, lazy, hirsute, galumphing Hephaestosmight (inour dreams) snag thehigh cheekbones, pouty lips, tight jeans Aphrodite.
Better to imagine Jennifer or to see her in the flesh? If you opt for“flesh,”I suppose I’m with you, buuuuuuuut… go rent the Friends episode where Joey threatens to “go commando” (no undies) while wearing Chandler’s trousers. In a subplot, Ross and Rachel break up, then reconcile. As Rachel flounces off in a clingy gown to the museum opening (or something), she purrs to Ross—and to us—that she, too, is “going commando.” Woof! Compare that shiver (and if you don’t shiver, go get some help… or take thatnight course) with your reaction to her largely desultory traipse naked (And I mean naked: she’s just come from the waxing salon where she’s ordered the “Telly Savalas,” if you catch my drift…) across the big screen. Then whisper to me, Grasshopper, where does Art lie?