Going The Distance

Hollywood and I don't have a good track record when it comes to rom-coms. Hollywood keeps making crap films, market them as supposedly good films, which I then watch with crossed fingers hoping that it won't be crap and discover they were indeed crap all along. You'd think after all that I would have stopped going to see rom-coms. Turns out I'm a glutton for punishment lightly dusted with tiny optimism flavoured sprinkles.
I haven't seen any of director Nanette Burnsteins' other films but if this movie is anything to go by then I will be making a change to that situation pronto. Geoff LaTulippe is now on my screenwriters-to-watch list as this is his first feature film and he's got such a sweet name. Colour me impressed. Word is he is adapting 'Breathers: A Zombie's Lament' a zom-rom-com! And he's on twitter. Colour me following!
Erin (Drew Barrymore - Whip It!) has a summer internship as a journalist at her dream newspaper, the New York Sentinel. Sadly, her weeks there are numbered and soon she has to move back home to San Francisco.
Garrett (Justin Long - Youth In Revolt) works at Diesel Records in New York and has just been dumped by his girlfriend (Leighton Meester - Gossip Girl). Feeling rejected and confused, he goes to the pub with his roommate Dan (Charlie Day - It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia) and good pal Box (Jason Sudeikis - 30 Rock).
Garrett meets Erin over the soft glow of a video arcade game and the two hit it off.
The weeks fly by as Erin is frantically trying to get a job at a newspaper in new York so she can stay with Garrett, but, as all on-screen romances go, things can never be that easy.
Frequent flyer points amass as the two fly back and forward every few months in what is soon becomes a trying relationship. Phone sex, surprise visits and countless text messages are no substitute for the real thing.
Meanwhile Erin has applied for a job at the SF Chronicle. Will she take the job close to home and dump the guy or move to New York and give up her dream career?
I'll say it straight. I really liked this one. Tis the Holy Grail of rom-coms in my opinion. LaTulippe's script was so clever and witty. The off-screen chemistry between Barrymore and Long translated well on screen. They are both cute as buttons and funny as hell.
I could watch a whole movie devoted to his mates Dan and Box. Dan's 'open toilet door policy' and Box's time-machine moustache cracked me up. I would have liked to have seen more of those two but I guess that would be another movie.
Christina Applegate (Samantha Who?) is great as Erin's hygiene-obsessed sister Corinne. I would have also liked to have seen more of Natalie Morales who rocked in The Middleman.
Sure, there was a little bit of cheese, I think it's illegal if there is no cheese in rom-coms these days, but it was of the 99% fat-free variety. I'm just so thankful that Katherine Heigl was nowhere to be seen (though there was a preview of her new movie... which looks like crap).
Things I learnt: more women need to wear bow-ties in public; bollocks to sponteneous sex - always check the immediate vacinity for other human beings beforehand; Michael Bay makes gay films.
Very enjoyable.
Seven out of ten.