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The Break-Up |
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 Release Date: 06/02/06 (Future Release)
Starring: Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston, Joey Lauren Adams, Ann-Margret, Jason Bateman
Director: Peyton Reed
Rating: (PG-13) |
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Genre |
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Comedy, Romance |
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Running Time |
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106 min |
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Distributor |
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Universal Pictures |
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 Official Website |
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NEW YORK REVIEW
While soldiers and civilians were dying out of sight, the nation breathlessly followed the story of Brad and Jen and Angelina and Vince. Why, their picture even adorns this column. Audiences for The Break-Up will go in wondering, Will there be signs onscreen of Jen’s fragile emotional state? Will she and Vince have sexy chemistry, paving the way for a storybook rebound for America’s princess?
It’s hard to tell if they have chemistry, since the movie concerns an excruciating split. In fact, given their broad characters—he’s a childish, sports-loving, proudly Polish slob, she’s a well-coiffed, ballet-loving aesthete—it’s hard to figure how they bought and decorated an expensive Chicago condo together in the first place. Has there ever been a couple the audience has rooted so hard to see broken the hell up already?
The Break-Up is a routine, stereotype-stuffed sitcom with pretensions. The director, Peyton Reed, is an aesthete, too (he made the overbearingly stylized Doris Day deconstruction Down With Love), and he clearly wants to push the standard Vince-Ben-Owen-Luke adolescent yukfest into edgier and more emotionally ambivalent territory. But the movie plays like Scenes From a Marriage for 14-year-olds.
Vaughn has fattened himself up—I hope it’s design and not dissipation—and he proves again he’s a two-key virtuoso, veering between manic jabbering and slack helplessness. I fear that even when he’s eligible for Social Security he’ll be playing the overgrown child-man forced to grow up and become more emotionally available. Aniston, on the other hand, is available as all get out: lithe, toned, bronzed, highlighted, showing off her bod in the money scene, a naked stroll before her ex with freshly shaved (off-camera) privates. Our princess projects so much triumphant healthfulness that she never seems vulnerable—and certainly not to the Duke of Slobovia.— Reviewed by David Edelstein, New York Magazine
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