Going the Distance: Critic Reviews

Going the Distance may be a minor movie, but it's also the rare romantic comedy in which you can actually believe what you're seeing.

Acknowledges both the difficulty and the comic potential of the arrangement, and does so with enough insight and charm to make you wonder why frequent-flier love is not a more popular theme in romantic comedies.

A long haul.

This premise, with better writing, could have made a much more compelling movie.

It's filthy, funny and kind of sweet, if not quite up to the level of Judd Apatow's oeuvre in the burgeoning field of R-rated comedies with heart.

Between this movie and her fascinating performance in HBO's Grey Gardens, Barrymore, at 35, is becoming a serious comedic actor.

Nanette Burstein reminds us she was previously a director of documentaries by occasionally shooting with a handheld camera for no discernible reason.

This empty, immature romantic comedy ultimately feels as if it's filled with all the hot air that separates New York and San Francisco, yet still manages to be a suffocating bore.

There's rat-a-tat dialogue in "Going the Distance," but it's kept small-caliber, and the film does not kid itself -- or us -- about how much hard work is required to keep a flickering flame of feeling alive in the face of a big, cold world.

Screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe's story of a recession-era long-distance relationship and its hurdles takes its characters seriously.

There's also some gallows humor about the record and newspaper industries, but overall this is a light, genial comedy about denial and self-defense.

The film gets many things so right about the conflicts faced by a two-career couple looking for work in a shrinking economy.

A foul-mouthed rom-com carved from Apatowian intent, but it feels more like a sketch of a movie than the real thing.

The film's constant raunch factor balances out its romantic center in a way that will likely surprise and please many.

In terms of tone and style, the finished product ends up all over the place: Think of it as the Sybil of romantic comedies.

A bicoastal comedy with a bit of a bipolar disorder.

It smothers the already frail story of their characters' long-distance relationship with enough R-rated gross-out humor for half a dozen Judd Apatow movies -- except that virtually none of it is funny.

[It does] that one thing that a romance absolutely has to do -- touch us.

Going the Distance is a reminder of the sorry state of the rom-com, where gross scenes and easy-to-write trash talk have replaced smart dialogue.

The long distance aspect was interesting, accurate, and mined for maximum comic effect.

Particularly forgettable.

It's a solid but totally forgettable entertainment, redeemed somewhat by Barrymore's loud, horsey laugh and some agreeably racy comic situations.

There's just not quite enough to the movie: not enough jokes, not enough obstacles, not enough sex.

To date, no motion picture has adequately captured the soaring highs and devastating lows associated with a long distance relationship, but Going the Distance comes as close as any movie has.

It's hard to imagine any romantic comedy going wrong in so many different ways.