I’m one who personally doesn’t enjoy the quick talking shtick that has basically made Vince Vaughn’s career. Not only is it a rather tiresome shtick, but hearing him talking like he’s wired on coke is often rather mind-numbing. So you pair up Vaughn’s coke head comedy, with Jennifer Aniston’s perpetually bland acting, and you have this vehicle that hopes to create a neo-“Odd Couple” vibe that never works. Romance comedies hardly ever work these days, and it’s because we have to care about relationships between two obnoxious characters with no connection to the audience. How can I give a shit about two people like this?
A bad sign is always beginning the film on a montage of scenes that are supposed to speedily establish what good writing can. These two people are in love, big deal. But the pictures say they’re in love, so automatically we have to care about these people. How can you invest emotionally in characters we’re only glimpsing through pictures? We can’t. So, then, watching them argue, and battle becomes a shallow affair. “The Break Up” is a painfully unfunny, and painfully stupid “comedy” about two utterly obnoxious folks that, in reality, shouldn’t even be alive. And wouldn’t you know it? “The Break Up” is another in a very excruciating series of pop culture’s series: “Woman rule, men are useless,” in which our character Gary is a rather immature lump who really has no chance of holding a relationship.
He’s dumb, idiotic, obnoxious, and child-like, while his girlfriend, played by Aniston, is supposed to be responsible, devoted to her work, and just puts up with him. We’re supposed to think the two are just mismatched, but really this film is more about the dumb guy fighting with his perfect wife. “The Break Up” transforms from an incredibly unfunny comedy to a ridiculous melodrama that relies on the endless diatribes between these two idiots, and their endless fighting. Anyone hoping for an actual comedy here will be disappointed, because we’re treated to non-stop arguing for the duration. “The Break Up” is anxious to be a modern “Annie Hall,” but really it is just a tedious, glum, and god awful affair. It was only under two hours and it felt like an eternity. It’s a god awful dramedy about two truly despicable folks and their endlessly stupid arguing that never works, even if it were to have actual competent actors leading the story.