GOING THE DISTANCE (2010) (**1/2)

This is a romantic comedy in search of comedy. So many of its romantic and dramatic pieces work well, but they are at odds with the humor. An R-rated comedy doesn’t have to be a raunchy comedy. When WHEN HARRY MET SALLY… talked about orgasms it was funny because it was the characters sparing with each other. Here talk of dry humping seems solely based on the term dry humping making the crew giggle.

Erin (Drew Barrymore, WHIP IT) is summer interning at a newspaper in New York City. She is finishing up her graduate degree at Sanford after having taken off some time to follow a boy. In NYC, she meets Garrett (Justin Long, DRAG ME TO HELL), a low-level record company employee. They hit it off over the six weeks Erin has left on her internship and try to keep up a long distance relationship, but this is much more difficult than they imagined it to be.

All the elements dealing with the long distance relationship work wonderfully. The film honestly deals with the frustrations of not having the person you love right there when you need them. Jealousy arises over how a male co-worker gets to spend more time with Erin than Garrett does. Texting and phone calls are nice, but they aren’t a kiss or a caress. And phone sex, can it ever really be anything but silly?

The on-and-off-again real life couple of Barrymore and Long have real screen chemistry. The way they act one believes that these are two people whose personalities mesh. Barrymore gives a fine performance as an independent woman who has a hard time knowing how to balance a career and a love life. It’s the way she plays the frustration of the situation that feels so honest.

All of this creates a lot of good will, but it’s ruined by comedy that seems from another movie. Long is strapped with two comic relief sidekicks played by Charlie Day (TV’s IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA) and Jason Sudeikis (TV’s SNL). The humor is so often tangential to the story. Sudeikis’ rift on his mustache being a snare for older women nostalgic for the 80s seems like an SNL gag, not something for a comedy about long distance relationships. I go back to WHEN HARRY MET SALLY… again in how the supporting characters provided comedy and a mirror of the main characters. Garrett’s friends do none of this. Christina Applegate and Jim Gaffigan fare better as Erin’s sister and brother-in-law, but any real use of their relationship to bring light to the main characters is squandered on jokes about Applegate’s Corinne’s disgust of bodily fluids or Gaffigan’s Phil’s tired “marriage is a prison” routine.

In addition to the out-of-place and not always funny jokes, the film rides too much on the chemistry of its leads to develop their relationship. He makes me laugh, we get drunk and high together and a relationship montage don’t quite cut it when you’re going to take these characters and keep them apart for huge chunks of the movie. Where is that all-night phone conversation like in Cameron Crowe’s ELIZABETHTOWN, where the characters go from discussing silly stuff to profound moments in their lives? Why does Erin want to be a reporter for the dying medium of newspapers? Why does Garrett want to be involved in music when the industry is on a down turn? Their professions could have been a beautiful metaphor for the transitional and uncertain nature of their relationship, but their jobs are never explored deeper than the surface.

Director Nanette Burstein made the great documentary THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE and this is her first fictional feature. It’s not a bad movie per se, but more of a disappointing one. There is a lot to like, but there is far more to dislike. In a long distance relationship, paranoia often sets in about how the distance is affecting the relationship and so the couple overcompensates. This film is paranoid about the distance between laughs, fearing that it’s not a comedy if there isn’t a joke every five minutes or less. The relationship is pretty solid, but the laughs are forced and that’s no way to go about forming real commitment.