Movie Review:
09-09-10 Movie Review: Going the Distance
Four noncommercial movie offerings between now and Wednesday, two tonight, one tomorrow and one on Tuesday.
Tonight at 6:30, the downtown library is showing a new French movie about an Iraqi-Kurdish immigrant in France who is determined to swim the English Channel to England; it’s called Welcome. And also tonight, the Murdock Theatre at 536 North Broadway shows an animation by the famous Wallace and Gromit studio, called A Town Called Panic, which the promotional flyer says is “zany, brainy and insane,” which seems probable, from the Wallace and Gromit people. And tomorrow, the Murdock shows an Italian comedy about family relations under overcrowded conditions, called Mid August Lunch. Both films at the Murdock begin at 8pm.
And Tuesday, something called Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, apparently a program of travel movies from all over the world, shows up at 7pm Tuesday at the Orpheum Theatre.
Or if all that is too complicated for you to follow, you could do a lot worse than go to a commercial theater and see Going the Distance.
Going the Distance is a slight little trifle, but its few short-comings are far outweighed by its very considerable strengths.
For one thing, it is a rare American movie in that it is about love, not just sex. Drew Barrymore and Justin Long have sex fairly early on, but unlike the general run of romantic-comedy couples, they have other interests as well, especially jobs. I could have done with more about why Justin Long doesn’t feel more portable, seeing that he hates his job; but Drew Barrymore’s journalistic ambitions threaten them with huge geographical separation, and neither of them wants to take a chance on love’s turning out to be short term or not strong enough to survive the strain of one or the other giving up too much for it.
The point is brought up, and taken seriously, that the one who makes the sacrifice might come to resent the one who didn’t, and Barrymore points out, again not strongly or often enough, that the unstated assumption seems to be that she will be the one who has to give up a life dream. Again, these themes are not developed enough, but they are brought up by the protagonists themselves and are taken seriously; they are not just plot devices. Going the Distance is not a serious movie, but it is serious enough for that.
The Minneapolis, Minnesota reviewer printed in The Wichita Eagle gave Going the Distance only one and a half stars, finding it, understandably, dirty-mouthed, and also cliché-ridden; but Entertainment Weekly graded it B+, saying it was “low-key, episodic, benign, and quaintly everyday,” “the rare romantic comedy in which you can actually believe what you’re seeing.” I go with the Eagle as to its characters’ utter unconcern with bathroom and bedroom tact, but with Entertainment on everything else, except maybe I’d give it a B. The characters are all likeable, even the usual lowbrow roommate and buddy, the romantic rivals are not treated as villains, and I appreciate seeing Christina Applegate doing well in a character role. The people who made Going the Distance like the world more than I do, and I appreciate that.
