Tags
Andrea Martin, Breaking Upwards, Comedy, Daryl Wein, Drama, Julie White, LaChanze, Movie, Olivia Thirlby, Peter Friedman, Romance, Zoe Lister Jones
it's so fun not being with you all the time!
R
Zoe Lister Jones, Daryl Wein, Julie White, Andrea Martin, Peter Friedman, LaChanze, Olivia Thirlby
Zoe: I just don’t understand how two people can go from being in a unit to just being…alone. That’s why I’ll never work in these things…because I know that they’re just gonna end in disaster.
Zoe (Lister Jones) and Daryl (Wein) are in love with each other…but bored. Their lives are not what they hoped, and they’re afraid that this ennui is going to drive them apart. So, they come up with a strategy. They will take some “days off” from each other in order to explore other things on their own, with hopes of bringing some excitement to their lives that will then reinvigorate their relationship. Predictably, there are problems…
This seems like something either George or Jerry would have come up with on Seinfeld. Break up…to save the relationship.
Apparently, real life writers/director Zoe Lister Jones and Daryl Wein did actually think up this idea and tried to use it with their own relationship. I guess it worked because they stuck together and made this movie.
In the film, however, there are many complications. I mean, obviously…there have to be, or else we wouldn’t really have a movie. There are other people they become interested in, jealousy, anger, misunderstandings, etc. And it’s all hurled at us in a somewhat confusing manner.
I kept wanting to like this movie more than I did (despite a touch of the usual indie film pretentiousness), but I was never quite able to track along with the characters’ emotions. From one scene to the next they’d bounce back and forth between anger and happiness, sometimes without any apparent cause. One moment they’re pleased to see each other and getting along, then in the next scene they seem to hate each other. Other characters come and go with little resolution, as do some scenes. At times it seems like they were just trying to throw too much stuff into the mix, and that all distracts from the main storyline.
That being said, I did enjoy it to an extent. Jones and Wein are likable enough, there are some funny and sweet moments, as well as two very enjoyable performances from Julie White (probably best known for being in Transformers at the moment) and Andrea Martin as Daryl and Zoe’s respective mothers. I was always looking forward to them being back on screen.
It’s an interesting concept, this idea that boredom with life can result in perceived boredom with a mate – even someone you’re totally in love with. And what’s there to do about it? Is time away really the answer? A new person to eventually get bored with perhaps?
Thankfully the movie doesn’t feel the need to provide easy answers or too sugary sweet of an ending. Though, like I said, they stuck together and made this movie, so…you can at least sort of guess the ending…
Like the Submarines say in their song Peace and Hate: Breaking down can not be cured by breaking up.
10 – 1 for a little of that pretentious indie feel – 2.7 for the confusing way the story is presented at times = 6.3
The Robot Who Likes Pretty Things 