As we all know, the best part of seeing a movie is not the movie itself, but the part afterward where you pretend you could have done better via bitchy, self-righteous blogging.

Last weekend, I saw Going the Distance, starring Drew "I'm indie because I wear baggy pants" Barrymore and Justin "cute and Jewish with bangs" Long. 

Going the Distance is the inspiring story of Erin and Garrett, two people who fall madly in love but  -- while they don't appear to have any real obligations or debt -- would sort of rather stay in their respective cities.  A doomed romance on the order of Love Story. Or, like, Gigli.

The film starts with Justin Long making out with the dark-haired girl from Gossip Girl.  Creepy, but not as creepy as Michael Douglas making out with a girl who was born in 1989 (Solitary Man deadens you to everything).

Garrett can't commit, as proven by his two wacky best friends who spend five minutes saying things along the lines of, "Oh, Garrett! You can't commit!" But, like, wackier.

Then he meets Erin.  Like every Drew Barrymore character in the universe, Erin is funky, independent, and rocks outfits that would make anyone else look like a lesbian from the 80s.

Also like every Drew Barrymore character in the universe, Erin wants to be a writer.  Why?  Because when Drew Barrymore was a small child, someone held a gun to her head told her that playing a writer is the height of being funky and independent.

Erin and Garrett meet a dive-bar, where Garrett falls for Erin's funky-independent-ness and Erin falls for Justin Long's ability to sort of look like Ross from Friends.  

After an edgy night of beer, Pac Man and trivia, Erin and Garrett go back to Garrett's apartment, where we learn that Garrett is a quirky guy because he has a poster of Lenny Bruce hanging above his bed.  Also, it says so in the script.

Despite the edgy, quirky funkiness, Going the Distance did have a few of the familiar Rom Com conventions, such as:

ruthlessly efficient falling-in-love montage
Coming up with a meaningful way to demonstrate deepening love can be so darn hard.  That's why God invented the split-screen montage! That's when they're not only falling in love via Coney Island, they're also falling in love via Top of the Rock.  The Cure is playing too loudly for you to hear what they're saying, but you can tell by Garrett and Erin's carefree ocean frolicking that they're meant to be.   With one screen it's like, "meh." but with two, it's like, "My God. they really are in love!"

Neurotic best friend with slightly bigger gums
The lead girl must have a slightly uglier sidekick.  Which is why they turned the stunning Christina Applegate into a shrill, obsessive-compulsive harpy who hates sex.

Cast of people who are supposed to be "quirky" but are actually so annoying you feel like you're being abused.  
Just your usual stoner waiter who thinks 2010 jug wine is the best thing ever.  And the best friend of the neurotic best friend?  Barely human. 

"Mumblecore" Dialogue
The kind of banter that when you overhear it at a restaurant, you think, "That could totally be in a movie!"  But when you're paying $12.50, you realize it really, really can't.  Too good to be true, not good enough to be fake.  

Alternate universe where whatever problem the main couple is going through is the worst problem in the world
What's that you say, reader? Family and friends tend to not really care if you're in a long-distance relationship?  Not so in Going the Distance a.k.a. Crazy Angry Anti-Long-Distance Relationship world, where it goes Long Distance Relationship, Holocaust, Oil Spill in order of badness.
So there was alot of people saying, "Wait, whoa- you're in a long-distance relationship?" the way most people would say, "You buried that body in the yard? aren't you worried the police will find you?"

Metaphorical Asian
If there's one hard lessson I learned growing up, it's that not all Asians are metaphors. Luckily, they are in the movies. So when Garrett is playing Pacman at the dive bar where he met his now ex-girlfriend Erin, he of course meets an Asian who tells him the errors of his ways coded in a discussion about Erin's impressive Pac Man scores.  "That's a hard one to beat," the Asian said meaningfully.  Needless to say, it resonated on many levels.  

Anyway, Garrett and Erin spend a long time figuring out what to do, but neither of them want to move because it's just sort of inconvenient, y'know?

In the end, they do manage to solve the problem in the least satisfying way possible.  Which makes you regret the 90 minutes you spent trying to convince yourself that Drew Barrymore went to Stanford Journalism School.

So Going the Distance. Not the best movie in the world.

It could be worse, though. Drew Barrymore could actually be writing.