When did Drew Barrymore stop being cute and become a woman? She is no longer the cute kids from "ET" and now is a sexual, sexy woman who looks and seems to be very comfortable in her skin. It looked like it happened right after  her award winning role in "Grey Gardens". Now she needs to do a Hollywood movie equal to that TV film.

There
are two movies going on in "Going The Distance".  The more important
one is the sweet, realistic love story between Erin (Barrymore) and
Garrett (Justin Long) with the former based in San Fransisco and the
latter in New York. They meet 6 weeks before she is ending her
internship at a newspaper in New York and returning west to finish
school after her life went off course because of a guy. Before she
leaves they fall in love and the movie moves from coast to coast showing
what they can do to carry their long distance relationship using all
the modern technical equipment available to them.

Garrett
is in the music business in a job he is not particularly in love with
and because of the economic times he can seldom go cross country. They
text, email, Skype, even
have phone sex to keep the romance going. You can feel, see and enjoy
the chemistry between Erin and Garrett and it is almost as if you are
looking at the on again off again off screen screen affair between
Barrymore and Long.

Then
there is the other movie, the crude, obscene, let's appeal to the boy
men to get them to come to see a romantic comedy with their
girlfriends/mates. It's not cute to hear Barrymore and Christina Applegate use the F words along with other curse words. Do we really have to see an actor on a commode? Or a couple 'dry humping' on a dining room table where we saw the co-stars having intercourse a few scenes before on that same table while another actor, Jim Gaffigan,
playing Barrymore's brother-in-law, is having a midnight snack? And
then there is the scene, a split screen, with Erin and Justin
masturbating.  I haven't even mentioned the bong pipes and grass plus
never ending drinking though I don't recall anyone smoking cigarettes!

I
love a 'happy ever after' ending to a romantic story but, not giving
away anything, as realistic as this movie is it should have ended at the
last airport scene.

I really got into, and enjoyed, the love story in this movie which would have been a winner without the raunchy material.