2 Hearts

Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, a real-life on-off-on-off? Hollywood couple, has It (in spades) in their first big-screen collaboration, Nanette Burstein’s Going the Distance. (I know the two were in He’s Just Not That Into You, but that one doesn’t count because they didn’t have any scenes together.)

Seriously, these two hot childs in New York City could not have more chemistry.

This is only heightened by the hipster-y, effortless way Burstein (who delivered the winning 2008 doc American Teen) shot them running wild and looking pretty – and in love and in heartache and in everything in between.

I tell ya, this one has it all: fun, laughs, a bit of poignancy....

That’s because, I should point out right outta the gate, this is not your typical romantic comedy. This isn’t boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl stumble over a misunderstanding but ultimately live happily ever after. This is a reflection of how things really are sometimes.

Barrymore and Long play Erin and Garrett, a pair of thirtysomethings who meet by chance at a downtown-New York bar one night, and become inseparable in that E+L 4ever kinda way.

Except 4ever is more like six weeks: Erin is in the Big Apple catching up on her life, working as an intern at the newspaper of her dreams, while Garrett – a working bee at a record company who wishes he could sign the bands that he likes...the indie ones who actually deserve a shot – is beyond-fresh out of a relationship, and maybe not all that into relationships, anyway.

It’s a bit of a thing at first, where each of them is at, but, ultimately, not that big of a deal.

A good thing since the two are, clearly, made for each other.

They both are so easy breezy, so tuned into the each other’s vibe, it’s almost sickening but, nevertheless, completely genuine. When their six weeks together are up, they face the issue in an honest way, without making silly-love-song promises to each other. It’s so matter-of-fact, so the way it would and should be...so...not the way they feel.

Erin and Garrett have been falling in love. They know it, and we know it. So they decide to go at it long distance, which is when Going the Distance gets really real.

The movie takes us through the ebbs and flows of their trying to making things work with her in San Francisco and him in the city. With a merciless job market that makes relocation pretty much impossible. With trust issues that arise out of not seeing each for months at the time.

It’s hard out there for two star-crossed lovers, y’ know. The situation is made bearable only by E and G’s tremendous support group, which include her sister, played by Christina Applegate with an impeccable sense of bitching comedic timing, and his bros before...anything, really (Jason Sudeikis from SNL and the scene-stealing Charlie Day from FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). If you already were looking at these two kids’ lives with a Oh-they-look-like-sooo-much-fun! eye, wait until you meet their friends.

To see this couple go the distance the way they do is a breath of fresh air that I know a lot of people will mistake by a whiff of bulls--- because they won’t be able to buy the trials and tribulations of an honest opposite-coasts courtship.

The audience will be looking for the sugarcoating, and the lack of it, the replacement of it by cursing, and the attempts at phone sex, and the acknowledgement of temptations, will prove jarring.

We get the good, the bad, and the jealous from this atypical rom-com, and that’s a good thing.

Therein lies the sweetness of this movie, and that’s why I think Going the Distance is so good.

My Rating ****

Photo: Warner Bros.