Written by: Susan Granger
www.susangranger.com

You would have to have been hiding under a rock not to know the whole Brangelina tabloid background that forms an ironic subtext for this timely, if tepid comedy.

Slobby tour bus guide Gary Grobowski (Vince Vaughn) meets Brooke Meyers (Jennifer Aniston), a perfectionist art gallery manager, at a Chicago Cubs game and they move in together. Two years later, their relationship is deteriorating. After a disastrous dinner party when Gary balks about cleaning up, Brooke rebels. She's had it! So Brooke precipitates a break up, hoping that Gary's losing her will make him want to change. Fat chance! Gary's male ego is hurt and he's determined not to capitulate.

Problem is: they co-own their cushy condo and neither can afford the mortgage.

Instead of slinging thorns a la "The War of the Roses," they banter and bait one another. She gets the bedroom; he gets the living room. Friends, family and co-workers (Jon Favreau, Joey Lauren Adams, John Michael Higgins, Judy Davis, Vincent D'Onofrio, Ann-Margret, Cole Hauser, Jason Bateman, Justin Long) get involved, but the stakes are pretty low as the fatally flawed romance falls apart.

Vince Vaughn has stated repeatedly that he wanted to make "an anti-romantic comedy" but it wasn't until he hooked up with screenwriters Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender that the idea coalesced with director Peyton Reed ("Down With Love") - and how convenient to have Hollywood's most highly publicized humiliated wife on-board. Not that they were going to capitalize on this. Oh, no! Surely those contrived magazine covers were just coincidental. You gotta credit Jennifer Aniston, though; while she's strident and brittle, her pain is real and it shows.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Break-Up" is a sour, unsavory 6. Rather than a black comedy, it's a bleak comedy.