Feed Your Netflix Queue: Going the Distance Is Worth a Shot

So it's a lazy Sunday and you're scanning your DVD shelf for the perfect R-rated comedy. While it's tempting to watch Knocked Up for the seven hundredth time, you ponder putting in Role Models, and promptly put it down thinking, it's now less of a film and more of a soundtrack after being embedded in your subconscious. Scanning Netflix suggestions is always tempting but occasionally, even their hypothetical queue seems tired and you wonder how “Pollyanna” snuck in there. Has your queue been jacked by a Haley Mills-loving friend again? You have to stop giving out your password or perhaps making it your first name. This is just how I found “Going the Distance” at my local Blockbuster on sale in a bundle. 

This comedy, starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, was predictably adorable but surprisingly funny, sweet and well written. In this far raunchier than advertised RomCom, two lovers are displaced when one of them moves across the country to San Francisco and the other stays behind in New York. Just as the heady title would suggest, they have to make the long distance relationship work despite professional pressures, sexual temptation and being too neurotic to have phone sex.  

While this film fell well within the realm of the typical Barrymore RomCom genre, its crudity, realism, and R-rating made it well worth the ride. Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day were perfectly cast as Garret's (Long's) posse, interjecting some much-needed male gross-out comedy and trash talk that is now regarded as an Apatow-ian art form. The movie definitely maintains the loveable emotion of an 80s classic mixed in a cocktail with those forgettable 90s movies that have become classics to the mid to late twenty-something sect. So if you're looking for a movie to suit a lazy Sunday hangover or the perfect male-driven chick flick to watch with a date, Going the Distance is a great option and unexpected crowd pleaser. Take control again - go ahead and feed your queue!