Breaking Upwards

Directed by Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein

(Not Rated)

**

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Breaking Upwards is a “fitfully amusing, mostly annoying” romantic comedy, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones star in this semiautobiographical story about a young New York couple who become bored with each other and take some time off. They lay ground rules to make sure they don’t run into each other (“I get Whole Foods”; “I get all the city parks.”). But—surprise!—their gambit doesn’t work. Neither does the film, to be honest. Still, Wein and Lister-Jones have done their best with “a tiny budget and a boatload of talent,” said Jeannette Catsoulis in The New York Times. Breaking Upwards combines a “startlingly humane” understanding of romantic relationships with a feel for modern life that’s convincingly up-to-date. Yet the young filmmakers seem to think their scenario has more “hipsterish, iPhone-era sexual daring” than it actually does, said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. In fact, it’s a rote exploration of a pretty ordinary situation. The leading pair does make a “cute screwball couple,” but Breaking Upwards too often plays like “outtakes from an abandoned Woody Allen film.”