The Break-Up Too Ugly To Watch

     Breaking up is hard enough to do when you are one of the parties involved. Why would anyone desire to watch another couple in the process of such a painful affair? Well, the folks behind The Break-Up are banking on the curiosity factor to pull moviegoers to the new comedy. While it begins as a fresh take on the traditional romantic comedy, The Break-Up eventually feels more like a horror movie – complete with vindictive acts and more uncomfortable scenes than most people can stomach.

     We’ve seen countless romantic comedies that follow the same old blueprint and it was about time someone did something out of the ordinary. The Break-Up is not the least bit romantic and that is perfectly okay. The problems arise when pessimism turns into sadism. This transformation eradicates the comedy portion from the genre and The Break-Up changes into something completely different.

     Different and ugly.

     The movie, which stars Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston as Gary and Brooke, respectively, opens with the two meeting at a baseball game. Somehow, Brooke falls for Gary’s obnoxious behavior and the flick speeds past their dating phase. Now, Gary and Brooke live together in beautiful condo in Chicago. The story narrows in on the fight that started it all (or ended it all, depending how you look at it). Gary arrives home from his job as a tour guide and hopes to relax while watching the game. Brooke becomes irate, though, when she discovers he brought home nine fewer lemons than she requested.

     Ultimately, the lemon debate brings out sour feelings and Brooke calls the relationship off. Brooke believes that this fight will force Gary to realize how to be a better boyfriend but she couldn’t be more wrong. Spiteful emotions rise within both of them and it appears as though their break up is final, although neither of them wants to give up the condo. They try living with each other (separate rooms being their individual domains, of course) but plots to get one another jealous and alienate the other from their common flock of friends prove too much for either of them to handle.

     Their spats were also too much for me to handle. At first, their squabbles feel like some maniacal game. It is kind of fun to see Vaughn and Aniston deal out the verbal punches… while it is still just an amusing competition. In due course, their break up becomes more serious and their actions cross over into a scary territory where both of them endeavor to emotionally harm the other one. It soon becomes apparent that Gary and Brooke are fairly mean-spirited human beings incapable of any compassion until they see the destruction that each of them has caused. Therefore, the game becomes a death-match and, theoretically, those aren’t that funny.

     What is funny in The Break-Up is Vaughn, who is the only upside to the entire flick. Unlike the bland Aniston who, by the way, offers absolutely nothing exceptional to the role of Brooke, Vaughn is a laugh riot. His thunderstruck facial expressions and speedy speech skills keep the movie rolling throughout the first act. This movie was Vaughn’s idea so it would be safe to assume that without him The Break-Up wouldn’t even exist. That isn’t that harsh of an alternative, but it is important to document that if there is one reason to see this motion picture, Vaughn’s your man.

     But that reason is simply not enough for me to recommend the flick which literally gave me a headache. There are too many arguments that we face in our own lives and there is an adequate amount of cruelty in the real world to have any interest in watching these two people duke it out. As the first third of the movie shows, when done right – with comedy – breaking up can be a fun subject. However, when comedy plays second fiddle to brutality, breaking up can be resounding torture.