I finish some computer time, the misses fancies a movie, Going The Distance looks harmless enough and I think, eh! what the hey... why not put it on. Big MISTAKE.
Now this is not going to be some big angry rant about how this movie was so abysmal it made me want to regurgitate my spine and then gnaw on it in sheer annoyance and bile filled rage because, truth be told, although this is an enormously tedious slice of beige, it didn't get me angry, it didn't make me anxious, it didn't get under my skin, annoy me, amuse me or engage me and neither did it send me to sleep, although the Wife snoozed a bit through it; It just made me sit there, blank, slack jawed, everything vacant, staring at the screen not able to believe that a usually fairly likable cast with a possibly interesting premise made such a badly made, badly paced, poorly executed, terribly written, atrociously performed, shockingly edited and downright tediously below average movie.
You know how they say that if you took infinite monkeys and put them on infinite typewriters then eventually you'd get the works of Shakespeare? Well put one half blind monkey who is more fascinated with his own genitalia in front of an etch-a-sketch for 5 minutes and you'd get a more film-able script.
I don't know if it's because I have seen way too many of these or if this one just was unbelievably lazy but it was just so boring, bland, obvious, slow and there wasn't one single attempt made to break with the tried, tested and failed more than succeeded (surely!) method of making Rom-Coms.
I honestly believe that good, well made, unpretentious, not too formulaic, genuinely funny, well performed, well observed and ambitious romantic comedies can be counted on about one and a half hands and would somewhere along the line include the names Harry, Sally and Annie Hall.
So I know that just by beginning one that the odds are against me about 99 to 1 but even so, am I wrong to expect a little more than a title that sounds it was thought up, way in advance, by a committee thinking they were being witty... a witty committee if you will, the comically slobby and unbelievable male best friends, preferably one with a humourous fetish, the 'ignore him, sleep with this handsome guy!' shrewish, single or slutty female best friends, the montages round Central Park, the kitsch 50s diner date, the referencing of a retro film, band or video game (or all three), a soundtrack featuring choice picks from "Now that's what I call sounds from the sucky rom-coms pt. 34 - generic yet now widely acceptable 80s pop ballads', the fake tanning scene (in every movie now, right?), the service personnel that, because you say you're in love with a woman in a silly, frantic way will let you do just about anything to get to her, despite heightened security everywhere and the obligatory mischievous kid in a dysfunctional family routine. I am sure I am missing 100 other cliches but I am too tired right now and too just deadened by this whole experience that I can't really be bothered to write for much longer.
There are really no words, I could talk about how Justin Long is more wooden in this film than a heavy mahogany sculpture of a red wood but I don't have the effort as the movie sapped my will to live, I could say how Drew Barrymore is unappealing, badly dressed and made up and keeps looking like she's going to f'ing crack up every 30 seconds but it would involve me somewhere, along the line, caring and I could even go on that for a big studio flick it has more continuity and editing errors than it has intentional laughs and unfortunately the continuity errors didn't cause any unintentional merriment either.
Well I can no longer muster the energy to even sum it up, such is level to which this film reached into my brain and erased anything useful in there and replaced it with a simple pudding-like substance.
1 out of 10 because I can't give it 0 as that is reserved for movies with any sort of pop icon in them.
Points from The Wife - 1 out of 10