RUTHERFORD ON FILM: Mars, Venus Collide in ‘The Break-Up’
By Tony RutherfordHuntington News Network Writer
Huntington, WV (HNN) -- Standing on the paradoxical “I love you as you are, now change,” “The Break-Up” pits two opposites -- Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston --- who somehow got together. In fact, the film does not reveal how their “love” blossomed, only that Gary (Vince) offered Brooke (Aniston) a hot dog while she was sitting four seats away with another dude.
Despite her sensitive artistic visual talents, Brooke hooks up with Gary who’s a loud, male diva with passions for the Cubs, TV, and deckchair snoozing. Cuddled in a slightly cramped condo, the couple throws a dinner party then has a dishes argument. It seems Brooke thinks he should not have to be asked he should just naturally want to help.
Self help relationship books call this a variation of “wishful” thinking which stands up there with “mind reading” and “changing him/her” on the list of feelings and actions that ultimately doom Mars/Venus relationships.
Personally, I like the example of a country girl who dons makeup, dress and heels to fit the description of the “Sex in the City” woman the man wants in a online personals ad. After going out a few times, she decides to opt for more comfortable attire and exposes some of her actual thoughts on life, which, of course, he finds less than appealing. She then wonders why he does not like her as she it. Oops, she walked into his life pretending to be someone other than “who she is.”
The change game is an equal opportunity mindset; both genders think that they can mold their partner into someone else. Unfortunately, when the “change” does not occur, oft times the person thinks he/she loves them less because they have not become the person about which their partner thought or fantasized they would become.
Coupling philosophies aside, Brooke has her self-esteem resting on turning Gary into an art loving, ballet loving, sophisticated business man. Believing that breaking up with him will make him feel bad so that he will change, she unleashes a litany of insults and blows. To which he responds with an equal amount of insults and snubs.
Aniston and Vaughn have a forte for the that’s so cruel they are funny one-liners. Their verbal chemistry has awesome intensity, so bitter are their statements that it’s difficult to conceive the sincerity as a nearly tearful Brooke reveals to friends, “I didn’t want to break up.” Still, they hatefully box the other with mounting pelts of mayhem which begin as flaw nagging and turn into below-the-belt family nasties. All the while, moviegoers continually burst out laughing at the more painful than funny comedy.
As their pettiness grows like a strain of rapidly advancing cancer, you do not know which one to despise the most. Advice from selfish friends escalate the warfare into a nuclear catastrophe by rubber stamping ideas to ‘hurt’ the other the most.
Dismissing the ongoing Neil Simon-esque verbal destruction, the complication of “who gets the condo” turns into awkward, yet amusing, teeter tottering one ups man (or woman) ship, particularly the “immaculate canvas,” video game and poker sequences.
What’s ruefully disdaining comes from the continual display of loving feelings out of sync. Stubborn cases of pride or two once united souls now eternally severed? Ultimately, as the “how they got together” stays unresolved, the resolution too begs for something more satisfactory.
And, the interplanetary spears to the heart allegedly “loving” warfare of alien woman from Venus meeting equally alien men from Mars continues for another day.