Movie Review

The Break-Up

Thursday night, thanks to my wonderful sister, my wife and I had a rare opportunity to go out without the kids, so I gave her what I like to call the "Blair Special"

side note: In college, I used to have a roomate named Eric Blair who was not very imaginative, and NEVER DID ANYTHING besides dinner and a movie on his dates. So much so, that forever after we dubbed the Dinner-and-a-movie date the "Blair Special". There is also a "Big A Special" but we don't want to get into that right now.


After a delicious dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse, we wen to see The Break-up starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston.

I was looking forward to seeing this movie, because I thought it would be funny, and because it stars Vince Vaughn who may be the funniest man alive right now. And besides, my mother-in-law said it was hilarious. (Of course, my mother-in-law also thinks Ellen Degeneres is funny and once highly recommended a movie called Mr Wrong to us, which was horrible. So maybe that wasn't the best source for a recommendation.) But, it had Vince Vaugh, so it HAD to be funny.

When we walked into the theater 2 minutes before it was supposed to start, we were the only ones in there. "uh,oh, I thought to myself - this is not a good sign" but I immediately cheered myself by the thought that if we were alone and the movie was really bad we could fool around a little bit.

As the movie progressed, I kept waiting for it to get funny, but it never really did. Oh, sure - there were a few funny scenes here and there, because after all, it DOES star Vince Vaughn, but in my view they were few and far between. I found it mostly to be sad and even a bit depressing. One thing I will say for it though - It was a pretty honest commentary on how selfishness and pride can sabatoge a relationship. People planning to get married should be forced to watch this move as part of their pre-marital counseling. Overall, if it had been billed as a drama, you might actually think it was good. As a comedy, it just doesn't quite cut it.

I am going to use as my rating system some popular Homer Simpson phrases: d'oh, meh, and woohoo. I give it one and a half mehs. If you want to watch it, wait for the DVD. If you insist on spending $8 for a movie, go see Cars or X-Men 3