Going the Distance (Review)

The romantic comedy has long been a genre of enduring ineptitude, mostly alternating between the mediocre and the just plain infuriating. Each year there tends to be maybe one or two that emerge as “good”, and a “great” one comes maybe once in a decade. This is likely because most romantic comedies follow the same basic blueprint: couple meets, various conflicts, they end up together at film’s end. It is nearly impossible to maintain any feeling of suspense throughout a romantic comedy’s duration, and thus it is up to the process of getting there to keep us entertained. After all, they are called romantic COMEDIES, implying that laughter is supposed to be had.

As such, I found Going the Distance to be as pleasant a surprise as I’ve had as far as romantic comedies goes. There aren’t many surprises to be had, but as an experience I found it enjoyably easy-peasy lemon-squeezy. It takes the novel approach of letting its likable cast be likable, and letting funny people be funny. This film is obviously rich in improvisation, and as such the conversations feel very organic, if at times to focused on one idea for slightly too long. It’s rough around the edges, but it’s likely as good as such a film could be.

Essentially the film tells of the romance between Garrett (Justin “I’m a Mac” Long) and Erin (Drew “And I’m Gertie” Barrymore), and how things hit a bump when Erin has to move back home to San Francisco. Thus begins a long-distance relationship, and the rest of the time we sit through the struggles of living on different coasts. That premise is thin as ice, and yet it is stretched to almost two hours. This is most worrying, but the film is able to make us care about these two, and as such we root for it all to work out in the end, even though it’s obvious it likely will.

Nearly all of my appreciation comes from the performances, which are amiable across the board. Barrymore and Long play the protagonists with a certain vulnerability that you don’t often see in romantic comedies, and they don’t merely exist to be young, beautiful people falling in love. What elevates Going the Distance, however, is its stellar supporting cast, who mostly could extract laughs from Mein Kampf. Not surprisingly, at least to me, Charlie Day of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia not only steals the movie, but picks it up and runs it to the next county. He’s one of those rare people that make me laugh simply by sight alone. You see him in the scene and you know it’s going to be a great one. Nearly equal is Jason Sudeikis of Saturday Night Live, and he has some kind of chemistry with Day that I just did not see coming. The Goofy Best Friend has long been a stock character, but it’s the acting that has to sell it, and here Day and Sudeikis more than deliver. There’s also strong work from Christina Applegate (Anchorman), Jim Gaffigan (a resident “that guy from that thing”), Ron Livingston (Office Space) and a couple brief performances from Rob Riggle (apparently everything in the last year) and Kristen Schaal (also apparently everything in the last year).

Going the Distance is the fictional debut for director Nanette Burstein, who has given us the documentaries The Kid Stays in the Picture and American Teen in the last decade. Here she wisely steps back and lets the actors do the heavy lifting, mostly because she most know the material itself is thoroughly routine. However, here it becomes clear that the joker can be more important than the joke, and as such Going the Distance is able to keep itself from being the usual romantic comedy nightmare. It’s also more dangerous, opting for the R rating instead of the safe PG-13 that we see movies like The Switch settling with. It’s not excessively R-rated, but it’s able to take it out of the dream world that PG-13 movies sometimes find themselves in. Sadly, all this did not translate at the box office, which could be because of the rating or the fact the release date was pushed back to September at the last possible second, but as such it likely won’t be in theaters for long. It isn’t a classic, but as far as the genre goes, it’s a start.

Rating: (out of 4)