The Break-Up Reviews

Summary Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston star in The Break-Up, which starts where most romantic comedies end: after boy and girl have met, fallen in love, moved in to start their happily-ever-after -- and right when they wind up driving each other crazy. [Universal Pictures]

• Comedy

• Drama

• Romance

Newly minted celebrity couple Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston don't have many opportunities to demonstrate their romantic chemistry in Peyton Reed's funny, heart-wrenching The Break-Up, but they still give what may be the best performances of their careers.

It's Aniston's return to the emotional authenticity that surfaced too briefly in "Friends With Money" and made "The Good Girl" such a revelation.

Despite numerous inexplicable setups and plot twists along the way that leaves the audience bewildered and puzzled, at least The Break-Up conveys a relatively real message: that life is not always as beautiful as it appears in movies, and sometimes, that might just be better.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Imagine watching Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage," except without good scenes, without a marriage (legal or spiritual) and without people worthy of anybody's attention, even each other's. Now imagine something even worse.

The script (by Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender) strains hard after a few easy jokes, and the whole movie feels dull and trivial.

Sporadic rays of sunshine emanate from the broad and gifted supporting cast, but the core story is almost relentlessly unpleasant, like sitting through a dinner party where the host couple does nothing but bicker.

Sadly, The Break-Up is simply an exercise in confusion. To call it erratic would be to imply there was a course it went off, but the film's intentions are impossible to fathom.

It's not a good sign when a movie is called The Break-Up and you can't wait for the couple to split so they'll get some relief from one another, and give the audience some relief from them.

Hard to hate anything Vince Vaughn is in .. for me at least. Good humor there :) Jennifer Aniston is ok but barely. Great flick if you want some VV sarcasm and laughs!

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

A great cast giving great performances doesn't make up for a daft script. It takes a long time to settle into and ultimately becomes quite tolerable, but it doesn't really have all that much to say. Also, Justin Long needed a bigger part, he was the most hysterical thing in the film.

The Break-Up is a very boring Comedy/Romance movie. The movie's got a very basic story, very boring characters, not enough good humour, bad pacing and it gets boring very fast.

Movies like this and the Hangover, etc, look to take common life situations and amplify them for comedy's sake. The Break-Up comes off as cruel. A couple chuckles can't save the fact that both these characters were written either mean or dumb. Vaughn, for some baffling reason, portrays a mentally abusive creep who, to the rational, semi-experienced boyfriend, comes off as utterly tone deaf. He goes from zero to out of his damn mind in no time flat. This movie was horrible.

Teen Choice Awards

• 1 Win & 5 Nominations

People's Choice Awards, USA

• 1 Win & 2 Nominations

ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards

• 1 Win & 1 Nomination