By Joshua Knopp/entertainment editor
In the world of romantic comedies, Going the Distance doesn’t quite fit in.
The film centers around a relationship between Garrett (Justin Long) and Erin’s (Drew Barrymore) which spans from New York to San Francisco. While neither wanted a relationship, they meet and fall in love in New York while Erin is there for a summer internship. When her time is up, neither is ready for their time together to be over.
The movie deals in long-distance relationships, a topic relevant to college students. The Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships estimated in 2005 4-4.5 million college couples in the United States were in long-distance relationships, and with the ever-increasing applications of and participants in social media, that number can only have increased.
Going the Distance has taken this incredibly pertinent topic and created a worst-case-scenario. While the center’s data shows that the average distance apart for couples is 125 miles and the average number of visits is 1.5 per month, Garrett and Erin are placed more than 2,500 miles from each other and for monetary reasons see each other only three times over the course of an entire school year.
The film also goes to extremes with its cast of supporting characters. Brandy (Natalie Morales), Dan (Charlie Day), Phil (Jim Gaffigan) and many others are intentionally too great, strange or meek to be true.
These larger-than-life characters become the core problem with Going the Distance. Every scene in which the plot is advanced is overshadowed by Box’s (Jason Sudeikis) affinity for mustaches or Corrine’s (Christina Applegate) comically excessive protectiveness for her sister. It’s as if someone saw the script, thought it wasn’t funny enough and decided to add gags to most scenes completely unrelated to the script or each other. Also bothersome is the ultimate conflict resolution, an action taken after more than a year of suffering apart but could have been taken at any point during the film.
While some comedies can pull off a sketch-type format, Going the Distance attempts something that amounts to a series of sketches combined with a story running throughout, and it just doesn’t work.
With this emphasis on unrelated slapstick and the repeated appearances of the band Boxer Rebellion, the movie is more similar to an episode of Saturday Night Live than a romantic comedy.
