A Comment on The Break-Up

A Comment on The Break-Up

I wrote some yesterday, and hopefully I'll nut up enough to post it for the world to see. After I wrote, I watched the Break-Up.

Do I need to say spoiler alert? Is anybody really jonesing that hard to see The Break Up?

Is anybody saying "jonesing" anymore? I apparently decided that 1997 was a good year, and that I'm going to run with the sumbitch.

Just a short comment on the flick itself: For some reason, I never bought Jennifer and Vince's relationship. Don't know why. They just didn't have it on screen, so that I believed it without convincing myself of it.

In fact, none of the movie was doing a whole lot for me. It was mildly amusing, and I think that's the first part of the problem. I think I wanted something different from both Vaughn and Aniston, both of whom are hilarious actors when they try--at the end of the day, I had to admit that neither part in and of itself is tremendously funny. And even so, both actors seemed strangely muted. Muted's not the right word, but it's as close as I'm going to get in a 10 minute blog post.

The movie itself just wasn't engaging enough for me to devote my full attention, that is until a conversation Vince Vaughn's character has with Jon Favreau's character.

Probably it's because they seem to get on so well in real life, but Vaughn and Favreau always have a good vibe. And it doesn't matter what parts they play in a movie...if one believes in the other's character, it seems to lend a certain gravitas to the whole rest of the flick.

Anyway, Vince Vaughn's character (that's how un-engaging I found the flick--I can't think of Vince Vaughn or Jennifer Aniston as anything but their public personas, rather than the characters they "playing") is lamenting how much he's given for their relationship, and how Jennifer Aniston's character does nothing but nag, and Johnny O (Jon Favreau's character--see, I remember his name, because he did something to snag my memory)--calls Vince Vaughn on his bullshit.

Basically, he says that Vince is his best friend in the world, but they all know that Vince's character is not going to give for them like his friends for him. He asks when the last time they did anything (as friends) that Johnny O wanted to do. He asks, "when was the last time we went to a White Sox game?" Adding, "not when they were playing the Cubs...."

I dunno. I liked that scene for some reason. I liked Vince Vaughn's character getting called on his bullshit, and I liked Johnny O for having the nuts to call him on his bullshit. I also liked that he didn't seem to be lamenting the fact, or sad about it. He'd just accepted it as the course of things, and didn't feel bad about it.

I didn't start really buying anything in the movie until the that point.

Also, I want to point out Vince D'Onofrio's performance. He's not in the movie a whole bunch, but when he is, he just eats up the scene. He's like Chris Merloni. He's one of those guys who's incredibly gifted at physical comedy, who seems to show up in one drama after the other, playing some emotionless hardcase. I always wonder if it's by personal choice that these guys don't do more comedy, or if it's just a matter of agents/producers or whatever not offering those roles.

Either way, it's a pity.

But D'onofrio's friggin' great in this movie. He looks like he's been chewed on by moths. Not his clothes, necessarily. The man himself. And he's wearing this cheap, 2-size too small suit (that he always wears, whether it's to dinner with Vince's house or at the office), and he's got this punchy set of movements caused by his constriction. His expression is constantly one of complete incredulity and exasperation.

And there's a scene where, as he's talking to Vince and his other brother, and he pulls a dish towel out and starts cleaning his ears that just takes the whole frigging cake. It's just great.

So. The movie itself, it's not bad, in the end. It's not great. But I'll give it credit for not giving into the impulse to put the characters back together. And a couple of the performances are just something to watch.