Techtite DVD Reviews

The Film: Let me begin this review by telling you how little it takes for me to laugh, or for that matter, enjoy myself at a movie. Hey; you can even advertise a drama as a "comedy," and if it's a meaningful drama, I'm still happy. I say all of this, because I want readers to fully understand the piece of totally maudlin humorless crap that is The Breakup. This isn't just a movie that is less than what it could have been. This is a movie that could've been something, yet is nothing at all.

It's not like the script requires much. It just required something. The filmmakers were given a simple story about Gary and Brooke (Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston) who are slowly breaking up. It's the perfect coining of the boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl story, only here he wants to lose the girl, although (or so we are told) they belong together. It's a story too simple to mess up...or so you would presume.

Is this because this is less of a comedy than a drama? No; I can relate to that. But even a drama must be entertaining. This film plays almost as if someone wanted to make every moment as dull as possible, scene by scene. Imagine if Star Wars was retold with constant bickering and whining, with no sign of Luke Skywalker, no sign of The Death Star, and as a result, no real reason to care. This film is a lot like that. It wants us to care about Gary and Brooke, with no sign as to why. This film needed to show the actual relationship before we could possibly care if they break up or not. Quick snapshots of them together during the opening credits does not cut it. As a result, we're all simply supposed to "know" these two belong together, when personally, I just never felt it.

So, they want to break up. Great. Break up. Do it now. Don't act like breaking up has all the complexity of a space shuttle launch. It's as easy as the word "Goodbye." A note on the pillow works. Inviting your new girlfriend over for dinner works, too. Drag out a breakup for too long, and not only does the story start to look fake; the characters aren't even consistent. One minute Brooke wants to torment Gary. Then she wants them to get back together. How wishy-washy can someone be? Brooke wants to break up, but not really. She wants Gary to feel bad they're breaking up, but not really. As a result, the audience wants them to get back together...but not really.

In defense of Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn; they're by themselves here. Every supporting cast member is either woefully misused or woefully miscast. This goes double, if not triple, for Brooke's best friend, Maddie (Joey Lauren Adams). Maddie supposedly knows what makes a relationship work, simply because she's married. Yet all her advise is worthless dreck, ranging from "men are children" to "you should find a way to show him you're upset." I could get better relationship advice from a fortune cookie. It doesn't help matters when Maddie delivers all her passive aggressive feminism with the voice of a cartoon bunny rabbit. In fact, that's an insult to cartoon rabbits. Five minutes of Maddie's high pitched emasculating squeals, and Bugs Bunny would probably jump in front of Elmer Fudd's gun.

Gee...was that last comment too sexist? It must be contagious. Women in this reverse-sexist film constantly whine about how childish men are, how awful they are, or how men might help clean the dishes, but they do not "want" to clean the dishes (?!?). Yet no matter how sub moronically idiotic every woman acts in the movie, at no point does a guy call her on it. At one point, Gary is ridiculed for buying "just" 3 lemons, when Brooke wanted 12. Why does Miss Sourpuss want 12 lemons? As a centerpiece! I kid you not. Supposedly, Gary is some sort of cad for not buying food entirely for decorative purposes. This is quite possibly the stupidest movie conversation I've heard in my life, and that's from someone who actually saw Dude, Where's My Car?

Therein is the problem with this film. It's not just the disappointment of what this could have been; it's the annoyance of it all. There is just nothing fun about two people bickering incessantly for two hours. I cannot express in words how disappointing this film was. To say that it was less than I hoped would imply that it was anything I had hoped. Yet The Breakup wasn't "less." It was nothing at all.

The DVD: Sometimes, you have to take time to lament the plight of the DVD design team. They get a film that totally sucks, and must make DVD "lemonade" out of stale lemons, to keep their jobs. To wit: this film sucked. Yet the attempts to make the DVD more interesting are brilliant.

One such DVD extra nearly had me up the rating of this DVD, just on principle: an audio commentary by Vaughn and Aniston themselves. Sure, there's the obligatory separate commentary by Peyton Reed, which is the typical director commentary. In other words: no, apparently, he has no idea his great film with great actors received a 33% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Yet Vaughn and Aniston provide the chemistry here, in a from-the-hip commentary track that is far more alive than the film itself. Given Vaughn and Aniston's real-life breakup soon after this film crashed and burned, it's amusing to hear their authentic banter as a then-couple, with Vince rarely letting Jennifer get a word in edgewise, and Jennifer pausing, as if to consider if a real "breakup" isn't in order.

Of course, there's also the standard DVD promise of deleted scenes, including an alternate ending. I don't know if I should spoil said alternate ending or not, though let's just put it this way: what could've possibly ended this film better? After all their incessant bickering in the film, maybe the best ending would've been forcing them to live as mimes. I don't know. I just know that alternate endings for bad films are just as they appear to be on the surface; an ending even worse than the bad ending they chose.

Here's a feature with unintentional humor that is funnier than the film ever tried to be: an "Improv with Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau." To hear the behind the scenes tale tell it; this was a pivotal scene of the film, yet the actors forgot their lines. So they improvise their way through the whole scene. Wouldn't you know; the improvisation is better than the script originally planned. That in itself is a better review of the film than I could ever write myself.

Add around 20 minutes of additional deleted scenes, extended scenes, and "outtakes," plus two behind the scenes featurettes, and you have what has to be the most valiant effort I've seen in years, from a desperate-to-sell-the-disc DVD design team. The film itself was just plain wrong. If this movie still earns any attention ten years from now, it's entirely because of the DVD, and its admittedly impressive extras.

	Final Rating : Burnout. Imagine a whole movie of people bickering incessantly about nothing. Then imagine something worse. Then imagine something that is just plain annoying.
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The Breakup

A Review by Techtite