The Break-Up is as guilty of false advertising as the billion-dollar industry that pushes the fantasy that romantic love lasts forever.
That may sound cynical but so is this dreadful Vince Vaughn/Jennifer Aniston vehicle, that inexplicably was a summer hit.
Maybe The Break-Up, available on DVD this week, was intended as a cautionary tale for young couples, providing lessons about incompatibility and selfishness and exploring the idea that you don't really know someone until you see how they respond to a sink full of dirty dishes.
Or not ... the film was clearly positioned and marketed as a summer "romcom,'' but romance is on life support and the laughs are few and far between. The Break-Up was sold to the date movie crowd, but it is a nasty and unpleasant treatment of a toxic relationship in its death throes. Does that sound like fun on a night when you are out with that special someone you are just getting to know? It's not.
Things turn sour almost immediately. After a preamble that informs us how Vaughn's Gary used his fast-talking shtick to earn a date with Aniston's Brooke at a Cubs game, we are treated to a montage that shows us the happy couple intoxicated with love and desire. Shift to an adorable domestic scene, in a downtown condo right out of a design magazine, and we find out appearances are deceiving.
Gary comes home to open a beer, hit the couch and watch sports highlights, while Brooke, fetching in her black dress and apron, bustles about the kitchen preparing for a dinner party. This is one of the scenes that gave all of us the wrong idea about The Break-Up.
It was Gary's job to bring home lemons.
"What my baby wants, my baby gets,'' he says, delivering the lemons and reaching for the remote.
"But baby wanted 12 lemons,'' protests Brooke.
Awww, cute. Hilarious mock bickering to follow. Boy being an overgrown boy and girl acting in mock outrage at his boyish antics. Well, not so much.
Before long the fight is on. Brooke really did want 12 lemons and she really does want help in the kitchen. Gary really is not budging from the couch.
The fighting goes on and hostilities turn ugly. We - especially those young couples on their first dates sharing popcorn and shifting uncomfortably in their seats - don't quite get it. This isn't funny.
Don't fret. It's not you - it's this offensive little movie, which keeps shifting tone, from black comedy (dark melodrama?) to attempts at romantic comedy.
Most of the time, Vaughn and Aniston don't play it for laughs - the fight scenes are real and hard to watch - but then we encounter the eccentric friend parts that are essential to romcoms, and intended to make us laugh. (More or less hung out to dry in underdeveloped roles are the talented likes of Jon Favreau, Justin Long, the Mac from the Mac/PC commercials, and Joey Lauren Adams.)
The Break-Up lacks the heightened style you might expect of a black comedy, like The War of the Roses, which would make the content more palatable. It is played straight which only leaves us squirming.
But the movie is also undermined from the get-go by the patently obvious fact that these two are completely wrong for each other.
Even with a healthy suspension of disbelief, it would have been unlikely that the stunning, smart and stylish Brooke would have lasted half a date with this overbearing neanderthal. All women, I suspect, who see this movie will agree, and they will be thinking, nay shouting at the screen, "Why would you stay with this chump?''
Why indeed?
That dynamic renders the final three-quarters of the film utterly ridiculous. With each scene, Gary and Brooke commit greater acts of emotional cruelty against the other, but still we are asked to believe they are fighting to stay together.
It's the only funny thing about the movie.
Vaughn and Aniston are skilled comedic actors, but here they are out of their depths, or victimized by the script. (Maybe Aniston looks so miserable because something about the movie reminded her of her own breakup with Brad Pitt.)
When it finally ends on an unbelievable and gutless romcom note - a signal that this couple may still have a future - I hope our young couples have deserted the theatre and gone on to a nice spot where they can stare into each other's eyes.
If romance can survive The Break-Up, maybe it can last forever.
THE BREAK-UP - original rating: 11/2 SUNS (out of 5); DVD rating: No Suns
