What the Haters Missed in Going the Distance

Every so often, a movie comes into theaters with at least one big target on its back, and then it surprises the naysayers by actually being entertaining and worthwhile. Certainly Titanic couldn't have had worse buzz, between its scheduling and budget difficulties and the easy jokes that could be made from its title, only to wind up being one of the biggest grossers of all time. Going the Distance (new on DVD from Warner Home Video) is no Titanic, granted, but this charming and funny little movie is nonetheless quite the surprise, all things considered.

Even if you didn't find this long-distance romance between Drew Barrymore and Justin Long to be enchanting, you have to acknowledge the hurdles it overcame:

It's a narrative feature directed by a documentarian.

Do you remember Canadian Bacon? Or Stoogemania? Or The Dark Wind? Those were comedies or dramas directed by, respectively, acclaimed documentary filmmakers Michael Moore, Chuck Workman, and Errol Morris. Only the first one received any significant theatrical release, and all three are pretty stinky. So with that kind of track record, it's pretty extraordinary that Nanette Burstein (American Teen, The Kid Stays in the Picture) overcame the Non-Fiction Curse.

It features a real-life couple.

Theater folk like to say that romantic sparks are most likely to come from two actors who hate each other in real life. (There was even an entire episode of Friends built around this idea.) When a man and a woman try to recreate their off-screen involvement in front of the cameras, the results are usually along the lines of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Days of Thunder or Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger in The Marrying Man. (There aren't many recent examples because most twosomes know better than to try it.) But whether Barrymore and Long are exes or on-again-off-again or friends with benefits or whatever, they click with real brio here.

It's a 21st century romantic comedy from a Hollywood studio.

Seriously, has the last decade been as dire for any other genre? Can we take another movie where Katherine Heigl learns to loosen up and have orgasms? In a better era of the industry, Going the Distance would be a minor diversion, but nowadays, it feels like a welcome visit to a bygone time where romcoms didn't have the nails-on-blackboard quality they so frequently demonstrate these days. (And I'm including He's Just Not That Into You, which featured Long and Barrymore in its ensemble, as part of the problem.)