The Break-Up *** out of ****

"Breaking Up?" It's better than you've heard.

Now here comes an unlikely summer sleeper: “The Break-Up,” scourged by mainstream and Internet critics alike, is a surprisingly good, bittersweet adult comedy, a story modest in ambition but nicely executed by leads Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn and director Peyton Reed. It’s a movie that could disappoint the “Wedding Crashers” crowd looking for raunchy, cynical humor, but it works on the more basic level of relationships - you sense the bonds and buy the conversations the characters have. Are Gary (Vaughn) and Brooke (Aniston) unlikable? No - they’re like us.

Reed opens with the couple meeting at a baseball game, fast-forwarding through their happy years with (beautiful, telling) snapshots under the credits, and halting at a fight they have after a family dinner. Their relationship is familiar: Gary has humor and charm, but must also have life structured around him, while Brooke tries too hard to perfect things that don’t need it. Brooke keeps dutiful score - she knows what she’s done for Gary, when she’s done it, and how many times - while Gary, who gets his way, never has to. Brooke ends the relationship in a huff, expecting to mend things later that night, but the rift grows, as it must, for Gary remains in a victim stage. Brooke exhausts her list of guilt trips before Gary hits back with one of his own; when Brooke finds out, Reed lets a look between the two explain more than dialogue.

The screenplay by Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender is knowing in the ways men and women fight; there are a lot of lines for the respective genders to nod over. Vaughn and Aniston make excellent bickersons, they’re skilled with their sarcasm and delivery in a way that wounds without being cruel. The couple displays chemistry in these scenes; it’s just not sexual. Eventually, real and fake love comes down to other things anyway. The couple has it but, out of pride, choose to express it to best friends (Joey Lauren Adams and Jon Favreau).

Vaughn creates space for his rat-a-tat routine, and hits a few doubles, especially in a montage about video game football. It’s not a movie Vaughn steals, but grounds himself in, attempting to work against his guy’s guy persona by playing one while revealing the sham of that lifestyle. “Your everybody’s friend,” one character tells him. Problem is, Gary doesn’t really have any. Aniston is Vaughn’s match; Brooke knows how to curse - the words and the music. “The Break-Up” stretches credulity maybe a little bit by letting Aniston look fabulous while Vaughn looks bloated and queasy, although this seems to be an issue in their fights.

The couch trip is occasionally interrupted by two needless gay characters: Brooke’s singing brother (John Michael Higgins) and her assistant (Justin Long), and a ridiculous art gallery owner (Judy Davis) whose type of character you can see for two full hours in the upcoming “The Devil Wears Prada.” They exist as a diversion for what have been labeled “difficult” characters, when in fact they have flashing signs over their heads for the scenes they’re in. Favreau does okay as an insightful, blue-collar pug, while Adams kindly reminds Aniston’s character that the reclamation project is going well. Jason Bateman drops by for a scene or two, as does Vincent D’Onofrio, who, as Gary’s brother, shambles and gesticulates his way through the movie as if he steals that goofy “Law & Order” cop.

Reed and Vaughn have a made the conscious choice to make this an actor’s movie - no zany soundtrack, no relentless editing - although the picture tends to cut back and forth between Gary and Brooke rather than including them in the same shot. A chatty, occasionally intense movie that kids may find too mature, “The Break-Up” exudes a confidence in itself most romantic comedies don’t have. It mostly works and when it doesn’t, at least it isn’t desperate and pandering. Best of all it’s wise not to wrap its story up in a completely tied bow, though, it in final scenes, we can sense what Gary and Brooke were about before they were Gary, and Brooke.