Going the Distance: "Stay Your Distance Away from this Calamity"

Rating:

**½

By: Da’Mon Guy

     Going the Distance is a boorish, painstaking absurdity that makes a futile attempt to capitalize on one of the raging current trends in Hollywood film making. The film is a tedious bore makes the running time feel unending. It’s a faintly entertaining story about the struggles of maintaining a long distance relationship. The movie features Drew Barrymore (Whip It), Justin Long (Youth In Revolt), Charlie Day (A Quiet Little Marriage), Christina Applegate (The Rocker), Jason Sudeikis (Hall Pass), Jim Gaffigan (17 Again), and an appearance by Rob Riggle (The Hangover).

     After a briefly dating for six weeks in the summer, two people make an attempt to maintain a long distance relationship between San Francisco and
New York.

      Going the Distance is a dreary, tiresome calamity that contains too few entertaining moments to warrant its production and running time. This dismal, unrelenting farce is another one of the overused genre of romantic comedy that attempts to squeeze the money and attention of unsuspecting couples that are attracted to the film by the trickery that the trailer of this fraudulent scam fools them into believing that they can relate to this miserable disaster.

      Real life lovers, Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, make an remorseless, unsuccessful attempt to bring their chemistry to the big screen. While the duo has a definite chemistry between the two of them, however, it doesn’t translate well into the vehicle they decided to use to showcase it. We never really feel the passion between the two. The movie does an adequate job of setting up the long distance relationship and the strain that it places on both of them. In spite of that, the pitiful, mishandling of the movie never allows for any level of connectivity to them. The audience never feels any sympathy for the characters. We sympathize for the situation but not the characters nor the film itself. This causes us to lose the level of connection that this type of film needs to be successful. The film has an extremely merciless, monotonous feel to it. It is filled with a series of inconsistent scenes followed by a number of fade to black scenes that begin the next chapter. It gives an almost hypnotic effect, mesmerizing the audience in a stupor of misery and boredom.

     The supporting cast are better than the stars of this disaster. Chris Day, Jason Sudeikis, and Christina Applegate bring some light to this dismal sink hole of despair. Each of them add some level of amusement to this stomach churning mishap. The trio of them are the only reason worth watching this repugnant refuse. There are a few limited, waning moments of enjoyment in the film. These rare occurrences however do hit a home run as the are extremely humorous. Sudeikis and Day serve as most of the comic relief within this. Applegate adds some much needed entertainment as Barrymore’s over protective, germ phobic sister, Corinne. The dry humping between Applegate and Gaffigan, Barrymore being thrown out of the bar, the table sex precursor to the dinner scene, and the dinner scene. The dinner scene with Applegate, Long, Barrymore, Gaffigan, and Rob Riggle was without question the one of the few shining moment in this best in the film.

     Going the Distance is a romantic comedy of disappointing proportions. This catastrophic mockery has a few squeamish moments that entertain but not many. There are a few short lived bright spots but not enough to acknowledge the fact that I watched this unmitigated disaster. The minimal amount of entertaining moments are no where enough for anyone to undertake the merciless chore of viewing this film in its entirety. It contains a small amount of moments that satisfy the romantic half of the romantic comedy genre and even fewer that satisfy the comedic half of romantic comedy. You can just use one word to describe this, BAD. The movie is very similar to a vacuum, it sucks all of the enjoyment out of you leaving you blank.