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Real-life couple Drew Barrymore and Justin Long star in this romantic-comedy about the tribulations of a long-distance relationship. Opens September 2 nationwide.
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The rom-com is in a pretty sorry state at the moment. It's tempting to place all the blame squarely at Katherine Heigl's feet, but she's only part of the problem. Going The Distance should be commended for at least attempting to do something a bit different, but it ultimately fails to distinguish itself in any significant way.

Instead of a nefarious love rival, a ridiculous misunderstanding or a secret identity, the main hurdle facing the two main characters here is an actual real-world problem – they live in different cities.

It often seems like rom-coms rely far too much on crazy contrivances to keep our couple apart, instead of focusing on issues that affect actual relationships. So while it's great that Going The Distance attempts to address this, the movie is so lifeless at times, I found myself actually missing the crazy contrivances.

Justin Long is a very watchable character actor who's developed into a nicely offbeat leading man, but his character here is strangely unlikable. Barrymore (Long's real-life on-again, off-again girlfriend) is her usual endearing self, but a lot of their supposed comedic set-pieces evokes the sensation of witnessing a couple who think everything the other person does is superlatively amusing, but are insufferable to all around them.

Going The Distance feels like too nice of a movie to rag on, but I really struggled to get much out of this. It's not painful to sit through, and the interesting supporting cast gets a few nice moments, but this is simply too meagre to recommend.

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