'Going the Distance': Bi-coastal love

While it's very fashionable these days to be "bi" (coastal), can true love survive 3,000 miles, checked-baggage charges and too-frequent visits through security lines?

That's the not-quite-burning question at the center of "Going the Distance," a sweet-tart of a comedy in which boy meets girl, girl goes home to California and the two try to keep their relationship alive via CPR (cell phones, passionate reunions, romantic e-mails).

Erin (Drew Barrymore) is a summer intern at the New York Sentinel; Garrett (Justin Long) is a low-level publicist at an indie record label. Both are on the romantic rebound, so when they click cute over beers one night, neither expects anything to come of it. Erin, after all, is going back home to San Francisco in a couple of weeks and Garrett is of the noncommittal variety of 20-something American male. Even if the 35-year-old Barrymore were the age her character claims to be (31), she'd still seem too old for Long, but the more essential problem is director Nanette Burstein's inability to juice up a pretty anemic premise.

The guy with a clue is debuting screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe, who at least knows how to spike the formula he's working with: To wit, when you have relatively colorless leads, you add oddball side characters, and give them all the better jokes - which he's done with Garrett's buddies Dan (Charlie Day) and Box (Jason Sudeikis) and Erin's sour sister Corrine (Christina Applegate).

With the rather charming collision of Erin and Garrett, and the hilarious digressions to Garrett's slacker buddies, "Going the Distance" gets off to a solid start. When Erin gets back to California, however, you sense the balloon beginning to sag. The jokes get more raw, more strained, and, as good as Applegate is, her hostility toward Garrett gets very tired very quickly - unlike the Box-Dan scenes, which are certainly crude, but feel much fresher, and funny.

As is the case with so many of these exercises in romance and cleverness, the filmmakers know how to get in, but don't know how to get out.