You have to take Crazy, Stupid, Love with a grain of salt. None of these things happen in real life. Swinging singles upscale bars don’t consist entirely of hot women and you. Lotharios do not take middle aged men protégés. People who hang out with one another for longer than a week tend to find out if the other has children, whether they want to know or not. 17-year-old girls don’t deliver naked pictures of themselves to middle-aged married men. If you can put all that behind you, this is the best date movie of the year.
Emily (Julianne Moore) admits to an extramarital encounter and cannot stop explaining it to soon-to-be estranged husband Cal (Steve Carell). As she continues talking, he gets quietly agitated to the point he needs to threaten leaving the moving car. She continues yakking, he opens the door and propels himself out. This doesn’t happen in real life, either, but it’s a great moment.
Steve Carell revisits his sad sack routine from Dan in Real Life. There are several truly hilarious moments in this film along these lines. I preferred the one in which the frustrated Cal goes on at length exploring the word “cuckold” at the singles bar. Did I mention the pre-frosh in love with his babysitter? Cringeful mirth. Ryan Gosling is perfect as the Miyagi roué who takes Cal under his groomed, waxed and tailored wing. Crazy, Stupid, Love even verbs “Miyagi” for that extra special touch. And, oh yeah, no picture can have enough Emma Stone these days. No exception here.
Rated PG-13 , 118 Minutes
D: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
W: Dan Fogelman
Genre: Date Movie, the kind where you actually want to see the person again afterwards.
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Fans of Ryan Gosling’s abs
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Junior High boys
Crazy Stupid Love. I agree with our esteemed host that many of the interactions were improbable. What was enjoyable about this movie is that someone actually WROTE dialogue for this movie. It was fun to watch the actors in most scenes and they seemed to enjoy the words with which they had to work.
Carell does have some of “The Dan” movie, but I think it is a slightly different Carell. Funnier, more flexible, more believable. It would have been easy to place Gosling in this movie to be the pretty boy. But someone actually gave him something to say while also being fantastically dressed. Julianne Moore is painful to watch in this film – her dialogue and approach to the role were fairly useless and did nothing to advance the film. Marisa Tomei – stroke of genius for her role. Overall, I thought the film was a breath of fresh air…until….the “Three’s Company” scene where everybody’s endeavors all collide in the back yard. What an insulting way to have this quirky story become officially silly. Last but not least, I did not buy the long haired, poor man’s John Cusack as the son giving the valedictorian-speech-to-end-all-valedictorian-speeches….silly, silly, silly.