Going the Distance (2010)
Directed by Nanette Burstein
Erin and Garrett are very much in love. When Erin moves to San Francisco to finish her journalism degree and Garrett stays behind in New York to work in the music industry, they gamely keep the romance alive with webcams and frequent-flyer miles. But just when it seems the lovers will soon be reunited, they each score a big break that could separate them for good.
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Barrymore overdoes the tomboy schtick “cool” girls have been required to do since the late ’90s (something about Mary, as I recall): she eats like a pig, drinks like a fish, rules at video games, loves The Shawshank Redemption, and takes monster bong hits.
Space allows the characters to have a sense of humor about themselves and time to indulge in the goofy giddiness of a new relationship, whether Garrett impersonates Morgan Freeman after learning Erin’s favorite movie is “The Shawshank Redemption” or Erin grins and throws out a hot dog she was about to eat after Garrett calls and asks her to dinner.
They drink, eat wings, play trivia, smoke pot and bond over “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Top Gun.”
As Erin and Garrett struggle to stretch lust across 3,000 miles via Skype, it's hard to maintain much interest in the fate of their union, in part because what they're like is so predicated on what they like, and what they like—they bond over YouTube memes, bar trivia, and The Shawshank Redemption—is so fucking boring.
The two hit it off immediately, bonding over beer, bong hits, arcade games and The Shawshank Redemption and embark on a six week whirlwind romance.
They share the delights of the sneezing baby panda on YouTube and Licensed to Ill, they can quote The Shawshank Redemption.
Their budding romance is propelled with some help from a montage of citywide cavorting, in which Burstein resurrects split-screen techniques that hark back to 1959's fluffy Pillow Talk.
Thus, like Sleepless in Seattle (1993), a film with which it otherwise has nothing in common, Going the Distance is a romance in which the principals spend much of their screen time apart, which gives first-time screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe plenty of room to fill with eclectic supporting characters.
So it's shaping up as a long haul, with certain echoes of Ephron's classic exercise in delayed gratification, Sleepless in Seattle, without being nearly as extreme.
As movies about displaced sweethearts go, " Going the Distance " is stuck somewhere between "Sleepless in Seattle" and a hard place.
But just as Tobe Hooper's 1974 masterpiece "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" opened a door for filmmakers equipped with power tools and a taste for torture but no talent, so too have Apatow's frank and sometimes hilariously rude rom-com box-office smashes -- "Knocked Up," "The 40-Year-Old Virgin"…
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They’re not wrong, from the standpoint of reality, which both films somewhat purport to represent, the inaccuracy is sort of staggering, especially Charlie Sheen’s reporter in Money Talks, who is so incompetent and unprepared, constantly editorializing on the fly, that he never would have been hired in the first place.
I wish their story -- from first-time screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe and documentarian Nanette Burstein ( American Teen ), making her narrative debut -- could have relaxed enough to coast on them alone, because then it would have been fine.
Director Nanette Burstein is best known for her documentary features (such as "The Kid Stays in the Picture" and "American Teen"), which were well-made.
This is Burstein's first feature film, but she has directed several notable documentaries, including 2008's "American Teen," which took the stylish approach of an MTV reality series.
In demographic strokes, documentarian-turned-narrative director Nanette Burstein (On the Ropes, American Teen) and first-time writer Geoff LaTulippe couldn’t have concocted a better mark if they’d designed me in a lab.
In her fiction feature debut, director Nanette Burstein ("The Kid Stays in the Picture," "American Teen"), working from a first published script by Geoff LaTulippe, gives a female perspective on the Apatow brand of comedy - it's sweet and it's raunchy but the women provide much of the raunch so it's toned down a bit, still utterly hilarious but never scatalogical.
The director, Nanette Burstein, is a documentary filmmaker (“American Teen,” “Going the Distance”) making her fiction debut with a script from first-time writer Geoff LaTulippe.
Director Nanette Burstein is best known for her documentary features (such as "The Kid Stays in the Picture" and "American Teen"), which were well-made.
"Going the Distance" was directed by documentary veteran Nanette Burstein ("The Kid Stays in the Picture").
Director Nanette Burstein, whose previous work was mainly in the documentary field ("American Teen," "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), gives us a romantic comedy where the characters falling in love is unambiguous.
In director Nanette Burstein's first fictional film (she made the highly entertaining documentaries "American Teen" and "The Kid Stays in the Picture" ), Barrymore and on-again/off-again boyfriend Justin Long play Erin and Garrett, a fairly ordinary, fairly likable young pair who meet one beery evening in a New York pub.
Scripted by a newcomer with the unlikely name of Geoff LaTulippe and directed by Nanette Burstein ("The Kid Stays in the Picture," "American Teen"), a veteran documentarian making her fiction film debut, "Going the Distance" concerns the complications and frustrations of long-distance romance.
But these two are very good together, and the film, directed by Nanette Burstein of the frankly terrific, nicely snarky 2002 documentary “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” is smart (when it isn’t being really dumb and crass).
There was a time when "romantic comedy" was a broad descriptor that could be used to define "The Philadelphia Story" or "Bringing Up Baby" or "The Lady Eve."
There was a time when "romantic comedy" was a broad descriptor that could be used to define "The Philadelphia Story" or "Bringing Up Baby" or "The Lady Eve."
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There was a time when "romantic comedy" was a broad descriptor that could be used to define "The Philadelphia Story" or "Bringing Up Baby" or "The Lady Eve."
Ron Livingston ("Office Space") does little with his role as Garrett's boss, much as was the case in his recent "Dinner for Schmucks" outing, but Matt Servitto (HBO's "The Sopranos," "Big Fan") makes comic timing an art form as Erin's NYC chief.