Trailers for The Break-Up are guilty of consumer fraud, said Ty Burr in The Boston Globe. Though advertised as a 'œvengeful romantic farce à la The War of the Roses,' the film is 'œthe feel-bad movie of the year.' It kicks off nicely, showing loudmouth Gary Grobowski wooing the polished Brooke Meyers at a Chicago Cubs game. (Never mind the fact that Brooke is sitting with her boyfriend.) The two fall in love, and their courtship is shown in a series of banal flashbacks. The story proper begins two years later, as Brooke and Gary are preparing dinner in the condo they co-own, and a misunderstanding about lemons escalates. As their fighting grows ever more acrimonious, it's tough to see what these two ever saw in each other, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. It's especially hard to see what Jennifer Aniston's Brooke saw in Vince Vaughn's Gary. He's an inconsiderate slob who utterly fails to pull his weight in the relationship. That makes this really a story of a nice girl making the 'œeminently sensible decision to dump a psychotically selfish lout.' The movie lacks any 'œwarmth, optimism, and insight into human nature,' said Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. For this movie to work at all, we have to actually like this couple. And we don't. We don't want them back together, 'œwe want them to end their misery.'
Rating: PG-13
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