This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.

It’s about time someone made a romantic comedy about long distance relationships. The set-up is ripe with both comic and dramatic possibilities, dueling polarities that Going the Distance mines equally. This leads to a bit of narrative schizophrenia that will doubtless cause those interested purely in romantic comedy to bemoan some serious relationship introspection, but it certainly leads, in the end, to a richer film and viewing experience. Most romcoms are brainless and played only for laughs. “Going the Distance” has plenty of laughs, but has some moments of satisfying, grown-up honesty, as well.

Garrett (Justin Long) is a low level scout for a New York record company who doesn’t take his relationships all that seriously and is rather allergic to commitment. Erin (Drew Barrymore) is a Stanford grad student and summer intern for a Manhattan newspaper who feels “behind schedule” in her life and not looking for anything serious. One evening the two meet in a bar, spend the night together and find it leads to several enjoyable weeks in each other’s company. When Erin returns to San Francisco to finish school, she assumes the summer fling is over, but Garrett, surprising them both, proposes that they try and make a long distance relationship work. Thus begins countless emails, expensive late-night phone calls and holiday pilgrimages from coast to coast. Will their love defy the odds, or will they, like so many before them, be unable to withstand the gridiron of a bruising bicoastal relationship?

Much of Going the Distance’s charm can be attributed to its eminently likeable stars, personalities we enjoy both on and off screen. It certainly helps that the leads are real life on again/off again lovers, spicing the film with a chemistry almost impossible to generate otherwise. Barrymore is unquestionably America’s girl next door, as adorable as she is clever. Too many romcom “heroines” are self-absorbed dimwits, and Barrymore should be applauded for consistently playing women who thumb their noses at that trend without once losing site of populist appeal. Barrymore and Long are ably supported by Charlie Day (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Jason Sudeikis (Saturday Night Live) as Garrett’s greasy best friends and Christina Applegate as Erin’s neurotic, overprotective married sister who doesn’t want Erin to keep making the same mistakes.

Directed by documentarian Nanette Burstein, Going the Distance works because it is the sort of movie that feels drawn from real life. There is plenty here about keeping the fire alive while the very thing that gives it fuel, namely the proximity of the two participants, is absent. Who compromises in these sorts of situations? Whose dream is necessarily compromised in the hope of bridging the distance? Unfortunately, the film tries to take a page or two from Judd Apatow and folds in a surprising amount of potty humor, some of it unexpectedly crass, especially given the relative wholesomeness of its stars. Much of this more edgy humor falls flat, not because it isn’t necessarily funny, but because it feels out of place and therefore merely shocks rather than delights.

There is a moment, late in the running time, when Going the Distance had the perfect, albeit bittersweet, opportunity to conclude. But of course, this being the country of happy endings wrapped in fairy tale bows, it insists on several more minutes, erasing any sense of enviable ambiguity. For me, in my perfect world, the film ends with the ideal line, “She’s gonna be hard to beat.” You’ll see what I mean.

© Copyright 2010 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Directed by Nanette Burstein
Starring: Drew Barrymore, Justin Long, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Christina Applegate
Rated R for sexual content including dialogue, language throughout, some drug use and brief nudity.
Running Time: 102 minutes