The Break-Up: C-

Everyone loves romantic comedies, right? Everyone loves watching the guy eventually get the girl, or the other way around, and listening to some sassy banter, right? And everyone is tired of these "rom-coms", right? That last idea must have been Vince Vaughn's, since it was his story that set this whole mess about two people who break up and continue to live together in motion.
Gary (Vince Vaughn) is quite possibly one of the worst people on the planet: he's inconsiderate, short-tempered, and extremely self-absorbed and he has absolutely no chemistry with his girlfriend. It's quite obvious why Brooke (Jennifer Aniston) would want to leave him and when she does, after some mildly amusing banter about lemons and dishes, it's a good thing, not an upseting one.

But there in lies the central problem to this movie, niether of the characters is ever real enough to pull on our heartstrings and if they ever were? The movie would be some sort of sadistic dramedy instead of a happy-go-luck romantic one. I must admit: I laughed a few times, though I suspect it was more on the part of Joey Lauren Adams and Jon Favreau and the "Marilyn Dean" staff.

So the writers decided they'd utilize only cliches, degrading both sexes of a relationship, in writing a movie so as to make it as easy to throw away as an empty soda can, fine. What they probably never concieved of was that it would leave the audience watching people they really didn't care about (although Brooke is just the tiniest smidgeon more real) arguing about a relationship niether one of the characters should have had. Even the "redeeming" last 15 minutes didn't do anything for me, after all: bad habits and evil behaviour that extreme wouldn't just take one heart-to-heart to fix. It'd take years of therapy. In the end not only are they punishing themselves, they're punishing us.