"THE BREAKUP"(2006) Grade: B, Recommended? Yes, for some funny moments, several witty observations, and for the many great shots of wonderful Chicago locales.

This movie is not about meet cute and living happily ever after, but instead about what happens when the meet cute doesn't result in a happily ever after. More power to writers Garelick and Lavender for coming up with a sly, witty and acerbic twist to the normal romantic comedy. This is more like an anti-romantic comedy, and that's just fine with me. I have always maintained that comedies are extraordinarily difficult to pull off, and this film succeeds better than most.

This movie has been unfairly slammed for not following the "meet cute" "romantic comedy" (RomCom) standard. The meet cute part is more or less dispensed with and this story rushes into the dissolution of a romantic relationship with very little attention spent on the reasons for its existence.

Needless to say, the apparent lack of a valid reason for the existence of the relationship between the characters played by Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston seems to have troubled many critics. Well, Hello? What planet are they from? Haven't they heard of the famous aphorism, "Men are from Mars and women are from Venus"? Or, how about, "Opposites attract"?

This film will resonate better with those who are married or have been in a long term relationship, as many of the comments remind us of similar comments that all we men have made. And have been made to suffer mightily for having made them...

My wife and I enjoyed this movie and hearing the chatter from the other patrons leaving the theater, they all enjoyed it as well. It seems that our expectations had all been lowered by the criticism and I am more than happy to say that this movie easily exceeded our expectations.

Billy Joel made this Mars-Venus kind of relationship famous with his song, "Uptown Girl." Well, his marriage to Christy Brinkley failed after a number of years. Marriages, or relationships, between proper young ladies and guys from the wrong side of the tracks are common and the subject of many films going back much further than this one.

Does anyone think that reporter Peter Warne had anything at all in common with rich heiress Ellie Andrews in the 1934 Oscar winning-classic, "It Happened One Night"? Or, reversing the situation, what did explorer and brewery heir Charles Pike have in common with card sharp and con artist Jean Harrington in Preston Sturgis' brilliant 1941 comedy, "The Lady Eve"? Now, I am only trying to compare this movie to those timeless classics in that they all have the common plot line of two wildly different characters meeting and falling in love.

By all sense of logic these relationships should have been doomed to failure, and yet we, ever the romantics, cheer them on to their eventual success. After all, we have all met or known of couples in real life who thrive together in spite of having nothing in common. If it works for them, more power to them.

Finally, the public seems to have a perverse fascination with Hollywood stars falling in love with their costars on the set, and they want to see this chemistry spark and then blossom on the silver screen. Many movies have been elevated or tarnished by the off set antics of its stars. In this case some may have gone to see this film expecting more of a romance given the fact that its two stars met and apparently fell in love during the course of the filming. If so, they will be severely disappointed, for that doesn't happen here. There is very little lovey-dovey between these two soon to be ex-love birds who are now real life love birds.

Famous Chicago Bear Coach Mike Ditka coined the phrase 20 years ago when he described his team and the typical Bears fan as being a "Bunch of Grabowskis," in effect, blue collar types from the many blue collar working class neighborhoods for which Chicago is famous. No effete snobs here, thank you very much.

Chicagoans Jay Lavender and Vince Vaughn had to have been aware of this when they gave the Vince Vaughn character the name of Gary Grobowski with their only altering Ditka's terminology by one letter. As a result, we Chicagoans know that this guy is going to be a working class stiff with few pretensions. He will also be a rabid sports fan who stops by a neighborhood bar after work before he heads for home.

And where does this blue collar guy meet an "Uptown Girl," in this case, a North Shore Girl? Why, of course at Wrigley Field watching the Chicago Cubs lose another game. "High Class" and "Low Brow" don't meet and mingle at many places, but Wrigley Field is certainly one of them.

Brooke Meyers (Jennifer Aniston) is most decidedly a North Shore or "Uptown Girl" and Gary Grobowski's Chicago version of Billy Joel's Christy Brinkley. Please note the yuppie name of "Brooke" for this blue-eyed babe with long blond hair. To reinforce the relational dichotomy, Brooke works at a chi chi Chicago art gallery owned by Marilyn Dean (Judy Davis), a woman who treats people around her, especially the men, like works of art: They must be beautiful and they can be dispensed with at a moment's notice.

Seeing these two wildly disparate characters break up seems to have been a foregone conclusion given the fact that they apparently had so little in common to begin with.

The clinker in their breakup is that they both still love their apartment with its views of Lake Michigan in the distance. Neither is willing to move out, so, just like in the earlier 1989 movie, "The War of the Roses," the apartment is split in two with Gary relegated to the living room and Brooke taking the bedroom.

A battle of wills ensues with both Gary and Brooke doing childish and manipulative things in order to "encourage" the other to move out. Gary buys the pool table that he had always wanted to have in his living room. He later brings over a bunch of strippers for a night of strip poker. Brooke parades all her new boyfriends through the apartment, and, when that doesn't work, she walks around in the nude to entice Gary back into their former relationship. He's certainly interested, but he is too much of a man's man to bite.

Both have a core group of family and long time friends who egg them on for supremacy in this battle of the sexes. Besides her boss, Marilyn Dean, Brooke has her other gallery coworkers as well as her brother, Richard (John Michael Higgins) and her parents (Vernon Vaughn, Vince's real life father and Ann-Margret) to lean on for support.

Gary has his two brothers (Cole Hauser and Vincent D'Onofrio) with whom he runs a tour bus company that parades up and down the streets of Chicago past all of the notable sites. Gary is the front man who provides the public face of the company as he rides with the tourists with a mike in his face, all the while getting them pumped up for their tour.

He also has his best buddy, Johnny O (Jon Favreau), who owns the bar he frequents. To embellish further his blue collar image, Gary and Johnny O belong to a bowling team along with Riggleman (Jason Bateman) and Christopher (Justin Long). Needles to say, Gary wears his bowling jersey around the house far more than any other shirt to reinforce his image as just an average Joe.

Neither of these two are bad people, but Gary is more myopic and selfish than most. The guy is absolutely clueless as to what it takes to make a relationship work. He figures that his job is everything, so much so that when he gets home he honestly believes that he doesn't have to contribute anything. His relationship with Brooke is defined by their shared apartment, providing sex, and his being there, just being there. All he wants to do is to chill out in front of the television set and watch a sporting event or be able to play a bloody combat video game.

In this relationship, it is all about him and his needs. He probably had a mother who babied him and his two brothers to death and never asked him to lift a finger. However, in this day and age when both work, each has to contribute something to the maintenance of the home and hearth.

The breakup of Gary and Brooke starts in the famous scene as seen on television and in the previews where she has asked him to bring home 12 lemons from the store and he only brings home three. A guy from Mars would naturally reduce this somewhat peculiar request by the logic of three lemons being more than enough to suffice for anything, but this woman from Venus has decided that she needs 12 lemons to provide the maximum visual effect for her table centerpiece.

Brooke asked Gary for a simple favor and he negated her request by substituting his own male logic. I certainly know how he thinks when he hears something like this, but most of us males are trained well enough to know to ask questions when we hear oddball requests like this so that we can ascertain the true mindset of our spouses.

The flare-up later reaches a crescendo after the dinner party when Gary sits down to play a video game without offering to help out with the dishes. Brooke asks him to help out since it had been a dinner for both of their families, but Gary refuses to tear himself away from his game. He can't even look at her or give her his full attention when she is talking to him. Well, it is obvious that the fight scenes and achieving a high score at his video game are far more important. Brooke blows up and Gary is finally forced to pay attention.

Gary says, "Fine, I'll help you do the dishes."
Brooke replies, "Now that's not what I want."
Gary then says, "You just said that you want me to help you do the dishes."
Whereupon Brooke retorts, "I want you to WANT to do the dishes."
And Gary sinks his ship like many a man before him by asking the proverbially self-evident Male question, "WHY would I WANT to do dishes?"

Boy, have we guys all been there and done this before we have learned that it takes a lot of work to feed and flower a relationship. This male chauvinist attitude may have worked in our parents' families in the 1950's, but not anymore.

Like most couples who fall out of love, Brooke maintains deep feelings for Gary and what might have been. He's a nice guy, but very much a work in progress, and it is obvious to her that he may require far too much work for what may end up being very limited progress.

She subtly tries to win him back but Gary isn't there yet. Like far too many relationships which end sadly, theirs is one where the realization of the need for the other occurs at mismatched, out of sequence, intervals so that the two may be doomed never to find enough common ground to re-ignite their former love for each other.

And then there is that lovely apartment...

A movie review by Carl Zapffe (06/22/06)

Gary (Vince Vaughn) and Brooke (Jennifer Aniston)

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