The Break-Up

Director: Peyton Reed
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman
Genre: Romantic Comedy
rating: 2.5

Love is never a one-way street. For a relationship to be fruitful, it requires a tremendous amount of patience and understanding from both sides. But when your relationship starts to go one-way, then you most certainly have a problem.
This is what The Break-Up is all about. The romantic-comedy flick is all about the relationship of tour guide Gary Grobowski (Vince Vaughn) and sales representative Brooke Meyers (Jennifer Aniston). After meeting at a baseball game, Gary and Brooke fall in love and decide to live together. They seem perfectly content in each other's company. What one day begins as a rather small argument over dinner escalates into something even bigger. It is funny to think how such small things can ultimately destroy a relationship. Gary and Brooke decide that they have had enough of each other and break up. However, both are unwilling to move out of their condo. They go to various lengths to kick the other out of the place by annoying each other, such as declaring their own "spaces" and doing whatever they want to the condo. As they go about their separate ways, they find a new found appreciation for each other. But the question remains, will it be enough to restore their tattered relationship?
The ending is somewhat hanging and disappointing, though, for audiences might expect it to be something better than what the filmmakers decided on. The movie borders between a light comedy and a mild tearjerker, but don't expect too much from it. The movie is interesting to watch, yet it lacks that certain humorous streak that most people would find in most romantic comedies. The dialogues are not extremely witty, but they are good enough to coax some smiles and laughs from the viewers. Also, having been set in Chicago, the film could have featured more of the scenic spots of the place; almost all the scenes simply travel back and forth from Gary's and Brooke's workplaces to their condo. Nevertheless, Vaughn and Aniston, the main stars of the movie, succeed in displaying their on-screen chemistry, which can be said to reflect their real-life relationship. Both experienced actors, they play their roles with conviction and complement each other's acting abilities quite nicely.