Going the Distance

Having phone sex with Drew Barrymore, Justin Long yells, “I want to come all over you.” And so it goes in Going the Distance, a sappy-sweet romcom that seems to have been invaded by a screenwriter ”“ one Geoff LaTulippe ”“ with delusions that he’s David Mamet. Fuck that. Director Nanette Burstein (On the Ropes, American Teen) is a solid documentarian with no flair for the stupid (that’s a compliment). Rated R for “sexual content including language throughout, some drug use and brief nudity,” the movie has a decent premise: Can love survive between two people in dying professions (she’s in newspapers, he’s in music) who live in different places (he’s in Manhattan, she’s in San Francisco). Barrymore and Long are both appealing, but not enough to sustain audience interest in the cinematic equivalent of dry-humping.