- Going the Distance. Directed by Nanette Burstein. Starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long.

Rating: 5 (out of 10)

Drew Barrymore may not pick projects that will earn her an Oscar nomination, but you can count on her charisma to light up whatever fluffy endeavor she headlines.

Alas, this is not the case with Going The Distance, further evidence that the recession is romance-proof, not vice versa. The stream of rom-coms that have rolled out since the economy went sour almost challenges moviegoers: at what point will you put your foot down and refuse to part with your hard-earned dollars?

Sex and the City 2, Valentine's Day, The Ugly Truth, Bounty Hunter, The Back-Up Plan, When In Rome: the locations change but the stupidity quotient is the same.

For a few blissful minutes, Going the Distance refuses to blindly follow the romantic-comedy blueprint, so a round of mini-applause for that. Erin (Barrymore) and Garrett (Justin Long) meet realistically, in a bar, and embark on a relationship that is soon thwarted by their jobs: she has to head to San Francisco while he stays put in New York City.

Erin (Barrymore) is a brassy alternative to the cardboard-cutout heroines of the genre, at the film's beginning, anyway. But then her flame is quickly doused by awkward dialogue and scenes so cheesy they might as well have been filmed in slow-motion with a soft filter.

Every plot device feels like a missed opportunity for something more: both leads are in dying industries (she's in newspapers; he's in music promotion) but that topical thread goes nowhere. Erin's sister (a great Christina Applegate in a less-than-great role) and Garrett's goofy friends seem to exist only to make Garrett seem like more of a catch than he actually is. Real life on-again, off-again couple Barrymore and Long have enough genuine chemistry to get the job done, but not the dialogue.

Director Nanette Burstein, best known for the docs American Teen and The Kid Stays in the Picture, loudly proclaims her film's indie sensibilities in everything from the title sequences to the soundtrack, focusing so much on the phone sex and dining-table coitus that she forgets to give the film what every romantic comedy really needs: heart.