Nothing keeps them apart except a continent

By A. O. SCOTT

The long-distance relationship is a fact of life for many couples, especially at a time of high unemployment and economic anxiety.

Charlie Day, left, and Justin Long are buddies in the film "Going the Distance," directed by Nanette Burstein.

"Going the Distance," which unites its young lovers briefly in New York City before sending one of them out to San Francisco, 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.

Yes, of course, there have been innumerable dashes to the airport, in which (usually) the guy runs to the gate or onto the plane itself to apologize, propose marriage, or just beg the girl not to go. "Going the Distance,"crisply directed by Nanette Burstein from a better-than-average script by the first-timer Geoff LaTulippe, acknowledges this convention and slyly subverts it.The airport scene happens at the end of the first act, and the guy makes it only as far as the check-in line, where he tells the girl that he will miss her and hopes they can find a way to keep in touch.

The two of them - Garrett and Erin, played by Justin Long and Drew Barrymore - live in a universe of quietly lowered romantic and professional expectations. He works in the music industry, she is an aspiring newspaper reporter, and the movie acknowledges the grim circumstances prevailing in both of their chosen fields without being too apocalyptic about it. Garrett has a low-level job at a record label, Erin is an intern at a New York daily before heading back to finish graduate school in California (where she lives with her sister and waits on tables for money), and both of their ambitions are hedged by a sense of diminished possibility.

The same is true in matters of the heart. Erin has a bad breakup behind her, while Garrett seems to have bounced from one relationship to another in a state of Seinfeldian noncommitment. After they meet, cute and mean and tipsy, over a video game at a bar, Garrett and Erin head back to his place for bong hits and a hookup that leads to something more, which in turn lands them at the airport. To recap: After 30 brisk minutes, which include a reasonably fresh take on the obligatory dating-in-New York montage - laughter and kisses, Coney Island and Central Park - they have fallen for each other and managed to make the audience care, at least a little, about what happens next.

I realize that what I have just described sounds kind of sad, even dreary. And the choices facing Garrett and Erin once the continent comes between them are made all the more painful by dint of being at once petty and hugely consequential. What should they do? Where should they live? You wonder how they can square their desire to be together with obedience to the imperatives of modern American individualism, which bundles paying the rent, finding your dream and meeting your soulmate into an equation that seems seductively simple until you actually try to solve it.

Happy solutions to intractable problems are what romantic comedies are supposed to supply, of course, and while "Going the Distance" hardly breaks the generic mold, it has enough honesty and charm to set it apart from most other recent examples. For better or worse, standard elements are all in place.

Courtesy: New York Times