Modern film goers have been conditioned to root for couples to come together, not break apart. This created a challenge for the producers of The Break-Up. For this movie to satisfy, the audience needs to be manipulated into pulling for Brooke and Gary (Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn) to split-up. To achieve this, screenwriter Jeremy Garelick came up with a clever and delightful device: he made them siblings. Once we realize that they are brother and sister, our ingrained habit of rooting for romantic and sexual partnering is overridden by our ancestral distaste for such a narrowing confluence of the gene pool.
The film opens with a lushly textured montage that explains the first hook-up. Older brother Gary dutifully puts on a tux to take his dateless sister to her Senior Prom. What begins as a chore turns into something special as they realize how much they have in common. Their conversation is peppered with the playful, upbeat patter of an eHarmony commercial. Once they start slow dancing to The Captain and Tennille's "Muskrat Love," they are on a slippery slope to singing and jinging the jango.
Fast forward to the present day to see the effects of years spent living in shame and secrecy. Gary, in particular, looks haggard and droopy. Vaughn is so spot-on as the schlub, in fact, it's hard to recall the time when he was "money." Brooke, meanwhile, has matured into a perky activist for the non-profit group CPA's Without Borders. She uses her math skills to calculate all the reasons why they should break-up. Once Gary agrees, the fireworks start as they both feel entitled to the trailer they've been sharing.
John Favreau and Joey Lauren Adams are guffaw-licious as the stars' best friends. These zany sidekicks want to keep the couple together. Favreau reminds Gary, "In the last election both candidates said that marriage is between a man and a woman. Period. You qualify." Adams, meanwhile, is more pragmatic, warning Brooke about the dearth of quality single men, "Sure, you may have asymetrical kids, and I guess you'll only have one set of grandparents to help care for the little potato heads. But check out the bar scene at El Torito and you'll reconsider this breaking-up thing."
The Break-Up is a product of the times, an intelligent examination of the moral complexities of the twenty-first century. The film also is further proof that Hollywood has supplanted Washington as the main venue for informed political discourse. Nationwide, people are debating the merits of cohabitation, gay marriage and polygamy versus traditional matrimony. But it takes a heroic piece of art, which The Break-Up surely is, to inspire thinking beyond the superficial and to trigger a search for absolute truth.
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