Review: 'Going the Distance' has laughs and charm

It’s about time someone made a romantic comedy about long-distance relationships. The setup is ripe with both comic and dramatic possibilities, dueling polarities that “Going the Distance” mines equally.

This leads to a bit of narrative schizophrenia that will doubtlessly cause those interested purely in romantic comedy to bemoan some serious relational introspection, but it certainly leads, in the end, to a richer film and viewing experience.

Most rom-coms are brainless and played only for laughs. “Going the Distance” has plenty of laughs, but has some moments of satisfying, grown-up honesty as well.

Garrett (Justin Long), a low-level scout for a New York record company, doesn’t take his relationships all that seriously and is rather allergic to commitment. Erin (Drew Barrymore), a Stanford grad student and summer intern for a Manhattan newspaper, feels “behind schedule” in her career and is not looking for anything serious.

One evening the two meet in a bar, spend the night together and find that it leads to several enjoyable weeks in each other’s company. When Erin returns to San Francisco to finish school, she assumes the summer fling is over, but Garrett, surprising them both, proposes that they try to make a long-distance relationship work.

Will their love defy the odds, or will they, like so many before them, be unable to withstand the gridiron of a bruising bicoastal relationship?

Much of “Going the Distance’s” charm can be attributed to its eminently likable stars, personalities we enjoy both on and off screen. It certainly helps that the leads are real-life on-again

off-again lovers, spicing the film with a chemistry almost impossible to generate otherwise.

Barrymore is unquestionably America’s girl next door, as adorable as she is clever. Too many rom-com “heroines” are self-absorbed dimwits, and Barrymore should be applauded for consistently playing women who thumb their noses at that trend without once losing site of populist appeal.

Barrymore and Long are ably supported by Charlie Day (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) and Jason Sudeikis (“Saturday Night Live”) as Garrett’s greasy best friends, and Christina Applegate as Erin’s neurotic, overprotective, married sister who doesn’t want Erin to keep making the same mistakes.

Directed by documentarian Nanette Burstein, “Going the Distance” works because it is the sort of movie that feels drawn from real life. There is plenty here about keeping the fire alive while the very thing that gives it fuel, namely the proximity of the two participants, is absent.

There is a moment, late in the running time, when “Going the Distance” had the perfect, albeit bittersweet, opportunity to conclude. But of course, this being the country of happy endings wrapped in fairy tale bows, it insists on several more minutes, erasing any sense of enviable ambiguity.

For me, in my perfect world, the film ends with the ideal line, “She’s gonna be hard to beat.” You’ll see what I mean.

GOING THE DISTANCE

Cast: Drew Barrymore, Justin Long, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Christina Applegate

Director: Nanette Burstein

Theaters: Chapel Hills, Cinemark, Hollywood, Tinseltown

Rate: R (for sexual content including dialogue, language throughout, some drug use and brief nudity)

Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

GRADE: B