GONG THE DISTANCE (Nanette Burstein 2010)

[Chris Knipp]

Nanette Burstein: GOING THE DISTANCE (20100



Joys and sorrows of bicoastal romance

"A surprisingly not bad romantic comedy," the Times's A.O. Scott says, crediting the two stars. And indeed any time Justin Long and Drew Barrymore are on screen by themselves is delightful in this story about two people who fall in love but are forced to remain on opposite coasts. Erin (Barrymore) sleeps with Garrett (Long) the day he's been dumped by his current girlfriend. They have little things in common and enjoy each other's company. So much so that she must tell him she's only in New York for the summer to intern at a newspaper. She's getting a degree in journalism at Stanford. He works for a New York record company.

Justin Long is an actor who oozes relaxed good humor. Drew Barrymore plays off him with subtlety and charm in every scene. What the writers don't do is get in their way. The line from having fun to a summer romance to loathing having to part to realizing they're really in love to suffering mightily from their separations feels absolutely natural and real, and also touching and sweet.

There are two sides to this movie, the "rom" and the "com." Sometimes the comedy messes too much with the romance, but if it it weren't for the comedy this would be a whole different movie which neither the actors nor the writers might be up to. The comedy makes liberal use of Garrett's two sidekicks, Box (Jason Sudeikis) and Dan (Charlie Day), whose advice, comments, and behavior, according to time-honored tradition in American movies, often turn crude and invasive. On Erin's side the humor relies on her California housemates, her overprotective older sister Corinne (Christina Applegate) and husband Will (Don Livingstone), who turn up when Garrett first heads West and he and Erin are having sex on their dinner table. It's another given that if all is going well, Erin and Garrett attack each other like mad sex-starved beasts every time they get back together. (An attempt at phone sex is a comical failure; they have to have the real thing.) They know they're made for each other. And the movie doesn't have to tell us that because it shows us. Erin and Garrett simply click. They have fun. They're great friends. They turn each other on. It works. And yet... They're a continent apart.

A lot of the storyline relies on Erin and Garrett's not thinking things through. But to do them justice, how can they know how hard it will be to be apart till they've experienced it for a while? It's another given that their being in love surprises them. They don't like to commit, and a long distance romance is a dangerous kind of commitment. It requires patience, restraint, and planning, behaviors seemingly in short supply with today's twenty-somethings. Erin's actually in her early thirties, and following a previous lover across the country, she claims, is what has set her back in time (you could say she's stuck in her twenties). This is why she's clear on the fact that she doesn't want to drop her career plans and move to New York this time. And yet, and yet... The conflict is between love and work. The relative merits of the two coasts are not considered.

Career ambitions not withstanding, away from her Stanford classes Erin works at a bar, and the idea of her coming to NYC and tending tables is therefore not inconceivable, just undesirable. Speaking of jobs, their two workplaces provide temptations to the long distance lovers to find solace closer to home. At Erin's job there's Damon, a rogueishly handsome Jake Gyllenhaal lookalike with the spice of a charming English accent (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) who of course makes Garrett very jealous one drunken evening on a western visit. And there's a lady at Garrett's record company with a long-distance boyfriend, and their shared problem threatens at moments to make them pair off.

None of these problems or any specific incidents seem important. All that matters is to keep us laughing, which is carried off moderately well except for the gross-out moments, while Erin and Garrett suffer pleasing pain from their forced separation. Each successive visit makes the problem seem more intense. The engine of a solution is a job offer for Erin at the San Francisco Chronicle. She did a good article during her internship, but the New York editor could offer her nothing. Papers are folding and laying off staff by the hundreds. A job offer therefore is a miracle. How can she not take it? But at first she dares not tell Garrett about it. Stay tuned.

Going the Distance ends pleasantly, but abruptly. It just sort of fizzles out. The point was perhaps to look at a situation, rather than to resolve it. First-timer scenarist Geoff LaTulippe's greatest accomplishment is to focus on a widespread romantic problem and then demystify and de-fang it with light comedy. What he and the filmmakers have also most notably done is to give Justin Long and Drew Barrymore a chance to work together in a story that fits their talents to a T.