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 Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston discover breaking up is actually pretty easy to do in the anti-romantic comedy The Break-Up. |
Usually watching two saucer-eyed actors swoon for each other on-screen makes me want to scramble for the barf-bag.
But The Break-Up, which pairs real-life paramours Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston, made me laugh, not gag.
Why? Because The Break-Up, as you might surmise from the title, dispatches with the love story in the opening moments and shifts gears into the couple's atomic meltdown.
Seeing Vaughniston, as they've come to be known, hurl poisonous darts at each other is not only vastly more satisfying than witnessing their courtship, but also, rather wittily, feeds into the world's perception of them as a celebrity soap opera. (As did the marriage-as-demolition derby milieu of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, starring Aniston's ex, Brad Pitt and mother-to-orphans-everywhere Angelina Jolie.) Are they splitting up? Are they back together? If The Break-Up has any social merit, it's that it makes you never want to know anything more about them again because -- while the story and characters are utter fiction -- the messy relationship wranglings are undeniably grounded in reality. It's not in the acidic league of, say, War of the Roses, but compared to the majority of rom-coms out there (that's romantic comedy to you and me) it possesses a sting of truth that's disarming.
Vaughn plays Gary, a Chicago tour-bus operator who meets Aniston's Brooke at a Cubs game. She runs an art gallery.
After hooking up, they buy a condo and live together for two years before splitting up.
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Neither will leave the condo, though, and both dig in, goosing the other to leave in a game of relationship chicken.
Be warned: The bickering comes precariously close to grating at times - like you're stuck in a car with one of those couples who mistake squabbling for communication.
Thankfully, director Peyton Reed injects enough levity into the mix - in the form of Joey Lauren Adams as Brooke's confidante and old Swingers bud Jon Favreau as Gary's best pal -- to make this break-up more sweet than sour.
EXTRAS: As was the case with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, don't go snooping around the DVD looking for insights into Vaughniston's lives. For that, you'll have to keep shelling out for Us Weekly and Star.
THE BREAK-UP
Starring Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston
Directed by Peyton Reed
In brief: A couple splits up, then feuds to see who keeps their condo.
Sun rating: 3 out of 5