Before I begin, let me preface this entire post with the fact that I am in love with Drew Barrymore. I have always found her very charismatic on screen, and after her directorial debut with Whip It (2009), she has been my hero. She has really been through a lot and come out on the other side clean and still making amazing work. Her acting is only getting better and better, her choices more and more strategic, and her talents are ever growing.
That being said, I just watched Going the Distance (2010) after a trip to my local video store yielded no copies of Vahalla Rising (2009), a film that is only on my radar because it comes highly recommended from a very trusted source. Before I discuss this movie, by the way, I would like to encourage you all to go to your local video store and pick up a movie. They have lots of titles to look at, and most of them will be there for you watch right then, no waiting for Netflix to come in the mail because it isn't available on instant Netflix, and no bad internet connection for downloading, just a simple DVD, and guess what? It helps people keep their jobs! And when people have jobs, the economy works better...and when people have jobs in the film industry, I have potential jobs in the future.
So, back to the subject of this post, two paragraphs later, Going the Distance was exactly what I expected, which is not a bad thing at all. The humor was very crude and very masculine, but it wasn't over the top. Drew Barrymore's character was a real woman who wasn't danty and fragile, and didn't try to bend men to her liking (trust me, those girl's aren't real, they just go to an all women's college). The conversations about sex and masturbation were just as honest as the ones about being scared of the upcoming relationship and the issues like "are we exclusive". Barrymore and Long had amazing chemistry, and the film truly captured what it's like to be reluctantly approaching a monogamous relationship, despite your better judgement. The writing, which comes from first time screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe was spot on and imitate real life in a way that is rarely seen in main stream hollywood. I will say that Long's character did do a complete 180 in his approach to relationships and went a little over the top in his gestures. They were more the fantasies of girls across the country, than realities of 20-something guys living in New York City, but that is the magic of movies and the willing suspension of disbelief. I tend to be skeptical of romance in movies, and for me to be so lost I didn't even notice how ridiculous it was, says something about the world created in the film.
As I was watching this film, I said to myself "this director has done documentary work" because of the way it was shot. There was one scene in particular, the first time the two characters have dinner together, in which I truly noted the documentary feel. The camera was removed from the conversation, giving a more observational feel, and the dialogue here as well as many other places was overlapping and almost stumbled upon the way real people talk. When I looked up the director, I was not surprised to find that it was Nanette Burstein, the director of American Teen (2008), one of my favorite documentaries to date.
This will hopefully be my last chick flick for a while, but I'm glad I watched it. I wanted to see this film in theaters, but never got the chance, so I'm glad that I saw it later rather than never. I highly recommend this film for the story and the characters.
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