Like Machete , Going the Distance also is getting wildly mixed reviews from critics. While Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle calls the movie "first rate" and praises it for capturing "the harshness and the sweetness of our time," Claudia Puig in USA Today writes that it buries "its romantic-comedy assets under calculated efforts to be socially relevant and vulgar attempts at humor." And while Michael O'Sullivan writes in the Washington Post remarks that "it's filthy, funny and kind of sweet. ... You will laugh and blush in equal measure," Linda Barnard in the Toronto Star bestows just 1 1/2 stars on it, calling it "a reminder of the sorry state of the rom-com, where gross scenes and easy-to-write trash talk have replaced smart dialogue." Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe is of two minds about the movie, remarking at one point in his review that "it's not a very good movie" and almost in the next breath saying that the filmmakers have managed "to carve out an energetic, sincere personality for their movie that verges on grown-up." But Lou Lumenick in the New York Post dismisses it as a "Labor Day weekend dump job."
03/09/2010
