Movie Review: "Crazy, Stupid, Love"

Anyone who is acquainted with Glenn Ficarra and John Requa writers of “Bad Santa” (2003) may be astonished by the couple’s ability to harvest the over-romantic film “Crazy, Stupid, Love.”

In this amusing, wisely directed romantic comedy, Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) and Emily Weaver (Julianne Moore) are a married couple getting a divorce due to his wife’s infidelity. Going through withdrawal after being separated from his wife, Cal accepts Jacob Palmer’s (Ryan Gosling) help to recreate Cal as a man. After following his buddy and becoming a womanizer, Jacob then takes a different path and meets Hannah (Emma Stone) and falls in love for the first time — which is where the movie started.

Gosling and Carell’s friendship began with Gosling’s interest in saving Carell’s miserable life caused by Carell’s failed marriage and cheating wife. Gosling said that Carell reminds him of someone, who the revelation of brings the audience closer to Gosling’s character.

Another plot line to this story is that Cal’s son Robby (Jonah Bobo) is in love with his teenager babysitter, Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who’s in love with Cal, leaving a interesting but also disturbing twist to this already complicated plot.

This film has a lot of hilarious moments, most of which include Gosling who surprised the audience by stealing the the humor spotlight from Carell. His character’s story of the hot guy does not have it all was portrayed very well and at one point or another during the film, you felt sorry for every character. 

This entertaining film has outstanding cinematography. When Jessica asks a peer for advice on how to sleep with older men, the girl pulls her to the side and gives her the help she needs. Jessica then has a light shining on her face almost so bright that her face isn’t visible anymore to show that she was enlightened. Although this may sound cheesy, it wasn’t because Jessica didn’t have a creepy grin, giving her a sense of maturity. 

Another attention-grabbing choice was the rainfall after Cal and Emily has an argument outside of their son’s middle school parent teacher conference. Cal responds to the rain with, “What a cliché.” Of course this is what everyone in the audience is thinking and then he blurts it out, making the rainfall easier to accept.

One expects this film to be a romantic comedy instead it’s a depressing film with funny moments. It allowed the audience to truly accept the character’s struggles and strife, but then lightheartedly laugh about it. This gives the movie depth unlike most romantic-comedies that seemingly drastic scenarios are always sugarcoated leaving the audience no choice but to dismiss the intensity of the story.

The actors in “Crazy, Stupid, Love” did an outstanding job, all in which completely embodied the role that they played. Carell seemed to shed his “Office” persona, as did Gosling with his film “The Notebook.”

Writer Dan Fogelman focused on the idea of having a soul mate and although it may not work out that will be the only person you will ever love. This film is a must see for anyone who enjoys a good film that both slaughters and restores your hope for love.