THE POPCORN REEL: NOW PLAYING
"THE BREAK-UP": 50 WAYS
TO (ARGUE ABOUT HOW TO) LEAVE YOUR LOVER?
Break-ups never felt this good: Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston in the film
which opened number one at the North American box-office in its first weekend. (Photo: Melissa Moseley)
Peyton Reed directs Universal Pictures' "The Break-Up", starring Vince Vaughn
and Jennifer Aniston as a couple who have reached their wits end and decide to
end their once-blissful relationship. The "fun" just begins when these
sparring partners, or exes-to-be navigate their way out of the shared apartment
that still holds a special fondness for them both. The turf war begins and
when the trenches get muddy, they get really murky. On both sides there
are no shortage of support -- whether eccentric or otherwise -- with Jennifer
Aniston's team of advisors consisting of stars the likes of Ann-Margret and Judy
Davis, with appearances by Joey Lauren Adams, Peter Billingsley, John Michael
Higgins and Justin Long. Vince Vaughn's stable of counselors include Jon
Favreau, Jason Bateman, Vincent D'Onofrio (of television's "Law and Order:
Special Victims' Unit"), and Cole Hauser.
Mr. Vaughn pushed for the film's locations to be in his hometown of Chicago, whose suburbs he grew up in. For native Chicagoans, locations like the famed baseball stadium Wrigley Field and Millennium Park will be an instant trip back to their roots. Appropriately the film is set in the mid-western city, since the two stars of the film are completely split down the middle in fighting for the remaining rights to stay in the apartment they live in. As for co-operation with filming in what is known in America as "The Second City", the city of Chicago was very gracious to the "Break-Up" crew, inviting it to shoot in all manner of locations. Mr. Vaughn who is one of the producers of "The Break-Up", describes the film as ". . .a love letter to Chicago, and I felt this town was the perfect backdrop for this film." Director Reed was enthralled by what he described as the photogenic aspect of Chicago: "From a photographic standpoint, it's one of the beautiful cities I have ever seen. The summer is fantastic; the architecture is amazing; the food is unstoppable."
From the advance buzz for this film it appears that audiences will be howling with laughter as these two embattled parties engage in
a small-scale War of the Roses fracas. A comedy about a delicate and
painful process, "The Break-Up" is sure to be an exercise in schadenfreude, and
can be expected to pose the question, what would we do in their situation?
And would we have quite so much fun in the process?? Obviously "The
Break-Up" is a comedy, and assumingly there are aspects of it that aren't
completely realistic and are thus being played purely for laughs.
Nonetheless, what some of the previews suggest is that the comedy is being
played out in the heads of the lead characters that Vince Vaughn and Jennifer
Aniston portray. What makes the combination of Ms. Aniston and Mr. Vaughn
so interesting in "The Break-Up" is that for several months off-screen they have
been rumored (primarily in the American press) to be a love item. During a
recent edition of the New York City-based late-night television talk program
"Late Show with David Letterman", Mr. Vaughn downplayed and declined to discuss
whether he and Ms. Aniston are indeed an item, under persistent questioning from
the show's host.
Similarly, Ms. Aniston still finds herself in the middle of a media gossip mill
about her split from ex-husband Brad Pitt, which received more than its fair
share of press headlines in 2005. One perhaps can only wonder whether
their own contretemps resembled anything like the movie indicates. Despite
the endless speculation about whether Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston are a
couple in real-life, one thing is true: both have excelled in their film careers
over the last few years. Since Mr. Vaughn played Norman Bates in Gus Van
Sant's shot-by-shot re-telling of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" in 1998, he has
played a series of comedic characters who have left audiences in stitches,
including in such films as "Dodgeball", "Anchorman", and most recently "Wedding
Crashers". Ms. Aniston has, post-Brad Pitt, appeared in a number of films,
while giving solid and impressive performances that have made her an
increasingly A-List-able acting commodity in Hollywood. Recent appearances
in "Derailed" (as an ambiguous and seductive business woman), "Rumor Has It" (a
woman swept off her feet unexpectedly by Kevin Costner), and most recently in
the current "Friends With Money" (in which she plays a drug-addled housemaid
desperate for human connection in Los Angeles), have confirmed Ms. Aniston as an
assured and diversified actor who has range and mileage beyond the long-running
hit television comedy series "Friends", which ended a few years ago after ten
years on the air. While she and Mr. Pitt were married, critics raved about
her work in "The Good Girl", an independent film in 2002, for which she won
critical acclaim and made many moviegoers take notice.
With "The Break-Up", it seems that Ms. Aniston and Mr. Vaughn have chemistry
for miles around, even as they go at it with each other on-screen. From
the fun they appear to be having, it appears that breaking up is an easy thing
to do. In real life, however it is not so. The Popcorn Reel posed a
difficult question to people at random for this piece: have there been any
humorous or unusual things that have occurred during the process of ending a
relationship with the one they love? Understandably, few people were
willing to address the question, or simply did not see anything funny about
breaking up with someone they once loved and cared about. "The Break-Up"
will undoubtedly provide a platform for which people can relate. Of all
the comments received from people asked the question about breaking up and
whether there was any humor in the process of it, came this response from a man
in Southern California:
"I remember when I broke up with my college girlfriend 12 years ago (because
I was graduating and moving back to my hometown). For some stupid reason I
bought her a gift (a CD.) I don't know why I felt I should buy her a gift
? (She probably threw it away.) There's something funny in a guy's
guilt that will make him do things he thinks are thoughtful but are really
pointless; just like the extreme things a guy would do to meet a girl in the
first place. It's like we're so overwhelmed we think too much about it.
In that state of mind, love makes us do things that seem momentarily logical,
but later embarrassing and ridiculous. That frame of mind makes for some
good comedy."
For certain, "The Break-Up" will not be short of laughs and will likely keep
people thinking about their own relationship mishaps. "The Break-Up"
is now playing in theaters in North America.
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