What's surprising about The Break-Up is that it's very literally about a break-up. Why should I have been led to expect something otherwise? Perhaps years of romantic comedies with famous stars made me believe there was nothing new to see in the genre; last year's Wedding Crashers -- also starring Vince Vaughn -- was a perfect example of this cozy stasis, with its easy middle class comedy, lightly outlandish situations and characters, and neat but weak ending. This stuff has become comfort food for the couples' set.

The Break-Up would appear to be the latest to keep this ball rolling, but it doesn't take long to give us the feeling that something's different this time. The movie starts with Gary (Vaughn) unconventionally meeting Brooke (Jennifer Aniston), then uses a photo montage through the title sequence to establish their relationship. After this, though, it prepares to brew up a particularly nasty fight, jarring in its recognizable awkwardness and sudden seriousness. And though the comedy is always there in quick, broad strokes (based around the fact that the couple co-owns a condo neither is willing to give up and there are friends all around forced to take sides), the movie strives for a certain underlying tone of realism that might feel unsettlingly familiar to anyone who's ever been in a relationship gone bad.

Even more surprising, though, is how clearly one of the sides is irredeemable. Gary is a hopeless man-child, a fast-talking, jokey, popular guy on the surface but a model of self-centeredness at the core. One might be tempted to call The Break-Up a "battle of the sexes," but the playing field isn't even in this case. No man with even a hint of enlightenment can comfortably side with Gary here. This creates an interesting but honest scenario in which we aren't dealing with perfect or even rational people. Believable? Maybe. We can see who Gary is, but we have to wonder why Brooke, who declares the break-up, is so determined to make him come back. She tries to achieve this through trickery, but it ends up making things much worse.

So The Break-Up documents the disintegration of a relationship. The question at this point, then, is: what of it? Couples who care about each other bring out the worst in each other when both parties are offended; that's certainly true, but it's also a common observation. The comedy here comes across as mildly effective, but it may not actually be as effective as the awkward discomfort of the many yelling matches depicted. The movie conveys a certain authenticity in the sense of a re-enactment; it's identifiable but not enlightening.

And that may be true because it's so straightforward. Movies throughout the decades have explored relationship disharmony from many angles, sometimes masked by seemingly unrelated storylines, augmented by fantasy, or tackled deeply by diving into character psychologies. So to see this kind of thing presented with little use of smoke and mirrors caught me off guard. I'll go as far as to say that I think it's courageous -- it's something we're not used to seeing from this category of movies these days. A stark honesty is presented here, in the characters who are very flawed, in the relative simplicity of the cause of their disagreement, and in the way even that very simplicity can spiral into something ungainly and complicated because of pride, sense of entitlement, and other weaknesses of the civilized career set.

If there's any entertainment to be had in The Break-Up, it comes from being able to clearly see and dissect the dilemma this couple faces, so easy to dismiss when we're not involved but such a quagmire to emerge unscathed from whenever we are. It stares you in the face, daring you to believe that you're above it.

(Released by Universal Pictures and rated "PG-13" for sexual content, some nudity and language.)

Review also posted on www.windowtothemovies.com.