When you go to the Fairy Tale Store, there’s no aisle you can walk down to assemble the ingredients for a scenario where Party A lives in New York, Party B lives in San Francisco and the two parties live happily ever after…in their long distance relationship. That’s not a situation little girls dream of. And it’s not a situation little Michael Sorrentinos have enough willpower or patience to endure.
(Long distance relationships can work. Of course they can. But their success rate hovers around the Mendoza Line. Or, if you prefer to be more current, the Jeter Line.)
So…Going the Distance is not a fairy tale. It is, in fact, the rare romantic comedy that generally avoids the fantastic machinations intended to make single women feel less bad about being single.
Going the Distance is on some real shit. Plain and simple. It feels as if it were written and produced by adults. Granted, “adult” is presently a very loose life status given that we live in the age of 30-year-old boys and women who behave as if 32 is the new 16. Maturity, however, is not completely extinct. And it is a prevailing theme, for the most part, in Going the Distance.
Drew Barrymoore and Justin Long star. They’re together in real life.(*) She plays the party who lives in San Francisco. He plays the party who lives in New York. They meet while she’s interning for a newspaper in New York and decide to have a thing while they share a zip code. Their mutual attraction hinges on 3 factors: 1) they’re both hipsterish 2) they’re both very candid in expressing their intentions and 3) they have legitimate chemistry. When she has to return to the West Coast to complete grad school, they decide to keep doing their thing even as all of the purple mountain majesties and thousands of amber waves of grain stand between them. Hence, our conflict.
There are other people in the movie. Charlie Day. Jason Sudeikis. Christina Applegate. You even get a cameo from Ron Livingston. (He’s the guy from Office Space.) Each of them is pretty effin’ funny. Particularly Charlie Day, who delivers the best line in the movie. Perhaps the best line in any movie so far this year. (I won’t spoil it for you.)
The Liberian Girl and I saw Going the Distance last week. Coming out of the theatre, we were both surprised that such a film showed respect for its audience. We didn’t have to watch Jennifer Aniston pretending she wasn’t Jennifer Aniston. And we didn’t have to watch Jennifer Lopez pretending she was some regular chick worth less than $12 million. We got to see real people–really funny people–doing things that real people do.
Real people play trivia games in bars with strangers then try not to get caught sneaking out of the cute one’s house the next morning. Real people also hate on the dude/chick who appears to treat their partner so awesomely that every other relationship sucks by comparison. And real people, believe it or not, have cinematic moments in the airport.
Many years ago–when Osama bin Laden was merely a recalcitrant scion and not a world-class villain–I was in a long distance relationship with a woman who lived two time zones away. We had found ourselves tiptoeing through a rather delicate moment and made plans for a rendezvous in a city equidistant to each of us. The rendezvous was not nearly as randy as we had hoped it would be. It was quite the opposite. And, at the end of the weekend, we chose to end our relationship. We did so during a cab ride to the airport. Checking in was very quiet. Clearing security was awkward. Sitting at her terminal waiting for her flight to board felt interminable. Eventually they called for her section to board. We hugged one last time. Said the things you’re supposed to say when it’s over and neither of you is happy about it. Then I watched her walk up a ramp and disappear into a 757. Part of me wanted her to turn, run back to me and say what you want people to say when you want the relationship to keep going. The rest of me knew she was too headstrong and too smart to even glance over her shoulder. There was no glance.
I shared that story with the Liberian Girl after we exited the screening of Going the Distance. She did not have one of her own to respond with. Nor did she ask a bunch of superflous questions about my previous relationship. (The Liberian Girl is too smart to be so petty.) I think both of us understood that the people on the screen were genuine avatars and that either of us could have been either of them.
When you’re in a long distance relationship, something very good develops to delude both parties. It convinces them to choose that arrangement despite the obvious obstacle. Sometimes, the good thing overcomes the miles. More often, the miles make the good thing wilt. And the two parties find themselves inside a bottle of gin. At least that’s where I found myself after my good thing walked away from me several years ago.
I won’t tell you how Going the Distance ends. I will tell you that it felt very genuine to me. Watching the two parties in that film fumble so candidly and struggle so earnestly felt like reliving the good parts (and the bad parts) of my own story. The film was not hopelessly romantic. It was not whitewashed of the unfortunate circumstances that happen in real life. And it found a way to keep a sense of humor amidst the pursuit of the impossible. Even when I wanted the film to stop being so real and to divert into fairy tale territory…well…I probably shouldn’t finish that sentence. Good, bad or otherwise, I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you. Although I will tell you there is far more that is good about this film–just as there is far more that is good about the relationships you remember most–than there is anything else.
Besides, the film should be at the cheap movie theatre in your neighborhood next week. And a cheap date is better than no date, right?
DYL MAG SCORE: A 6 point something that rounds up to a 7.
*You’ll have to check with Us Weekly to be sure. I’m no authority on those matters.
