Gary (Vince Vaughn) and Brooke (Jennifer Aniston) first meet at a Cubs game, where he bullishly sweet-talks her away from her date, a cipher in plaid shorts and a visor. Then, after a montage of snuggly still photographs — the only images in The Break-Up that demonstrate anything like chemistry between its two stars — they stumble into a fight that detonates their two-year-old relationship. Unmarried cohabitants and joint owners of a yuppie-elegant Chicago condo, Brooke and Gary engage in a desultory modern version of the high-spirited sexual combat that fueled the classic comedies of remarriage of the 1930s and 1940s. But the stakes are low, the script (by Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender) strains hard after a few easy jokes, and the whole movie feels dull and trivial.
To its credit, The Break-Up, directed by Peyton Reed (Bring It On, Down With Love), is not entirely predictable. In defying some of the rigid conventions of its genre, it shows some admirable pluck and wit, but these would be more appreciated if the principal characters were worth caring about or if we could believe for a moment that they cared for each other.
Each is given a job, a family and a few defining character traits. Brooke, with Ann-Margret as her briefly glimpsed mother and John Michael Higgins as her sexually ambiguous brother, manages an art gallery; Gary, from meaty Polish stock, works with his two brothers (Cole Hauser and Vincent D'Onofrio) running bus tours of the city. He's a slob; she's a perfectionist. He likes baseball; she prefers ballet. And so on.
PHOTO COURTESY FO UIP
The communication problems that wreck their unlikely (and in any case unseen) domestic bliss are strictly Mars-and-Venus, Oscar-and-Felix boilerplate. The arguments Brooke and Gary have, whether about household routines or about feelings, sound more like fumbling PowerPoint summaries of conversations than like real human speech. Reed rarely places Aniston and Vaughn in the same frame, preferring to cut tediously from one to the other. Perhaps this is meant to emphasize the rift between the former lovers, but it often makes it seem as if they are in two different movies, neither one very interesting.
Occasionally, a comic spark will issue from one of the stars, who fall back on the tried-and-true sources of their appeal. Aniston will punctuate a scene with a self-approving tilt of her head and a twitch of her adorable nose; Vaughn will talk fast and throw his bulk around, and you may smile in spite of yourself.
More frequently, what comic delight there is comes from the supporting cast: Jon Favreau as Gary's obligatory doofus buddy; D'Onofrio as his weirdly fastidious brother; Judy Davis as Brooke's vamping boss; and Jason Bateman as their friend and real estate agent in one note-perfect scene. Their efforts, unfortunately, are not enough to make The Break-Up memorable, or anything more than mediocre.
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
As we live longer, our risk of cognitive impairment is increasing. How can we delay the onset of symptoms? Do we have to give up every indulgence or can small changes make a difference? We asked neurologists for tips on how to keep our brains healthy for life. TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH “All of the sensible things that apply to bodily health apply to brain health,” says Suzanne O’Sullivan, a consultant in neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and the author of The Age of Diagnosis. “When you’re 20, you can get away with absolute
When the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese forces 50 years ago this week, it prompted a mass exodus of some 2 million people — hundreds of thousands fleeing perilously on small boats across open water to escape the communist regime. Many ultimately settled in Southern California’s Orange County in an area now known as “Little Saigon,” not far from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, where the first refugees were airlifted upon reaching the US. The diaspora now also has significant populations in Virginia, Texas and Washington state, as well as in countries including France and Australia.
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
RSS