When we think about relationships, we stir up the image of falling in love, and living a perfect life with the person who’s the reason you wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night. Unfortunately, this perfect image lasts a split second, until we open our eyes and see the ugly side of relationships. The tears, the heart-aches and the fights. We’ve all been there and we’ve seen our vase-like relationship slowly cracking to it reaches the brinking point and shatters into pieces.
In case your forgot a thing or two about my melodramatic description of a good relationship gone bad, just take a quick peek at last year’s hit movie, “The Break Up,” starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston (HBO, Channel 300, Available in Dish Premium Package). The two play a couple, (on-screen and off-screen, as a matter of fact), who have been living together for three years and seem destined to wed soon. However, Vince’s failure to think about anyone but himself, and to bring the twelve lemons she asked for, leads this relationship down to the breaking point. The bad gets ugly, when the duo does anything in their power to get under each others’ skin and to test each other’s resolve and lingering feelings.
The movie also looks at the miscommunication between the sexes, with scenes that were probably taken from a page of “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” The dialogue was also right on target, especially when Jennifer asks Vince to the dishes, and when he finally caves in, she complains that he should want to the dishes.
Although the movie provokes a few laughs, it’s hard to call it a comedy. It was sufficiently poignant, as it became not that much to watch these two characters break up. The inconclusive, Soprano-like ending, is unexpected, and leaves you in a break down wondering the fate of these characters that you spent 90 minutes watching.
