Going The Distance Movie Review
Review by QNetwork
Anyone who has ever been through the travails of a long-distance relationship will find something familiar in Going the Distance, a fashionably vulgar romantic comedy in which Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, who were involved in real life a few years ago, star as a pair of intelligent early-thirtysomethings who set out on a cross-continental romance. Barrymore’s Erin is a journalism graduate student at Stanford who meets Long’s Garrett while working a summer internship at a daily newspaper in New York, where he works for a music label. She is only there for six more weeks when they meet-cute at a bar over the classic video game Centipede (the first of many, many ’80s references), and their subsequent intoxicated one-night stand turns into something that neither can shake. They enter into the relationship with the full realization that they will soon be separated, and their attempts to keep it light and casual fail miserably, so much so that they decide to keep it rolling even after she is back on a plane to northern California. Thus, like Sleepless in Seattle (1993), a film with which it otherwise has nothing in common, Going the Distance is a romance in which the principals spend much of their screen time apart, which gives first-time screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe plenty of room to fill with eclectic supporting characters. Garrett has his two best friends Dan (Charlie Day) and Box (Jason Sudeikis), both of whom are delightfully single and full of all kinds of great relationship advice for Garrett, the kind that can only come from guys who are not in and have no real desire to be in a relationship themselves.
Review by I Am Rogue
Going the Distance is directed by Nanette Burstein, who created the wonderfully charming documentary American Teen and The Kid Stays in the Picture. With ‘Teen’ she was able to create likable characters around five teenagers who seemed to fit together like a modern day The Breakfast Club. It was a documentary that was able to make these kids relatable and yes, likable. With her latest, a narrative feature, she tackles the hellish theme of long distance relationships, with real life (on and off again) couple Drew Barrymore and Justin Long.
Burstein brings much of her documentary style to this long distance relationship and it works. The way the actors speak, how the film handles each relationship aside from the main couple, it all has a sort of quasi-real vibe. If you are looking for crude, you’ve got it here. The foul-mouth isn’t simply relegated to the fellas either. While ‘Distance’ isn’t necessarily as clever as an early Judd Apatow comedy, it is positively refreshing after a bunch of watered down, romantic comedies that show no heat and no heart.
The story is nothing spectacular. Erin (Barrymore) is an intern working temporarily in New York for a newspaper. Garrett (Long) works for a record company and lives in the Big Apple. The two meet at a club, decide to hang out before she goes back to San Francisco and guess what? They fall in love. This leads to lots of late night phone calls, failed attempts at phone sex and trust issues.
Review by View
Watchable romcom, enlivened by a frequently funny script and strong comic performances from a superb cast, though the script can’t quite resolve the problems raised by real life long-distance relationships and the finale seems like something of a cop-out as a result.
What’s it all about?
Directed by Nanette Burstein (American Teen), Going the Distance stars Drew Barrymore as Erin, an intern on a New York paper who finds herself falling for record label employee Garrett (Justin Long), despite knowing that she has to return to San Francisco when her internship ends. However, when the time comes for Erin to leave, the pair decide to give the long-distance relationship thing a go, despite scepticism from both Garrett’s best friends (Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day) and Erin’s sister and brother-in-law (Christina Applegate and Jim Gaffigan).
The Good
Real life on-again, off-again couple Long and Barrymore make an extremely likeable onscreen duo, generating an appealingly goofy chemistry right from the start. There’s also terrific comic support from Applegate and Gaffigan (both of whom get the film’s biggest laughs) and Sudeikis and Day.
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