My initial feeling about Crazy, Stupid, Love. was that the comedy never really lives up to its title. It’s also a story of multiple romance arcs that collide in a climax that is disastrously funny but seems to work in “too perfect” fashion. But upon reflection, it’s evident that the “Crazy” isn’t meant to echo the manic craziness that we’ve seen in a number of R-rated comedies this summer. The “Stupid” isn’t to imply idiocy. And “Love,” well, okay, it does live up to that descriptor. As for the confluence of romances in a single sequence I leave that up to serendipity.
A year ago this same weekend Steve Carell played an idiot savant (at least when it came to his construction of mice dioramas) in Dinner for Schmucks. While he has a knack for playing dimwitted characters, from The Daily Show to Anchorman to The Office, he really shines in roles where his life is in disarray. The opening scene, which starts out similar to the Steve Carell/Tina Fey dinner date in Date Night, sees Cal (Carell) and his wife, Emily (Julianne Moore), enjoying a night out. Cal, wearing rumpled Dockers and scuffed New Balance sneakers, looks underdressed. But he’s a suburbanite, not an uptown guy. It doesn’t matter because Emily drops a bombshell that she wants a divorce. Just like that. Twenty-five years of marriage. Gone. Rather than cause a scene right then and there, Cal instead keeps silent and saves his reaction for the car. Not a Revolution Road tirade, but a simple act of avoiding conversation, no matter how stupid the act is.
Crazy, Stupid, Love is not a hard look at a busted marriage. It doesn’t try to emulate the challenges like Kramer vs. Kramer did in the 1970s. It’s a light comedy about falling in and out of love.
Moving out of the house to live in an apartment, for the first time in Cal’s life he is a bachelor. Emily was his high-school sweetheart and the first and only woman he’s ever made love to. Sticking out like a sore thumb at a local singles bar (he drinks vodka cranberries out of a straw for Pete’s sake), Cal becomes a deluge of self-pity, hoping to catch the attention of any person in earshot. Enter Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling). Perfect haircut, perfect wardrobe, Jacob is the establishment’s resident hunk. He’s like a new age Patrick Demsey circa Loverboy only the women need not order extra anchovies. Seeing that Cal is down on his luck and in serious need of a makeover, Jacob offers his expertise on how to be a single man again.
The setup, which seems like something that would have been mocked in Friends with Benefits, works as well as it does because of Gosling’s lothario and the keen observances he makes about Cal in terms of style and presentation. Through Jacob’s teachings and trial and error situations, Cal soon masters the art of sexual manipulation and he himself becomes a fortysomething Casanova.
Crazy, Stupid, Love is not only about Cal trying to find his manhood. Cal and Emily’s teenage son, Robbie (Jonah Bobo), is going through puberty and trying to woo the family’s babysitter (Analeigh Tipton), who he insanely loves. But she has eyes for another man. The comedy is also about Hannah (Emma Stone), a law student who lives a controlled lifestyle. No spontaneity. Then she meets Jacob. Though for their first encounter she’s immune to his Jedi mind trick of getting her out of the bar and into bed. There’s also Emily’s relationship with co-worker Kevin Bacon, with whom she had an affair. Cal’s fling with an English teacher (Marisa Tomei) also leads to a wacky situation that could also be construed as kismet.
Pairing Dan Fogelman’s script (he previously helped write the features Cars, Bolt and Tangled) and the directing team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (I Love You Phillip Morris, Bad Santa) together could have been disastrous. As it turns out, the three have made the best movie for adults this summer. In a season where restricted comedies have dominated the marketplace, this PG-13 movie succeeds by being genuinely funny without needing to be coarse. It also helps when you have a star-making performance by Ryan Gosling, who is the essence of cool in his role. Watching his reaction to Cal opening his Velcro wallet at a high-end men’s store, or his remarks about New Balance and the Gap are spot on and worth savoring over and over again.
If there’s fault to be had with Crazy, Stupid, Love it’s in the number of stories that intertwine and conventional moments. Still, it has the right mix of schmaltz and smiles that make it hard to ignore.
Writer’s Note: As you may have noticed by the film’s title, it indeed ends with a period. Its significance may be that through crazy and stupid actions everything ends with love. Though to go to lengths to end the film’s title with a period is highly unusual. A question or exclamation mark pops up every so often, but a period? [To save the grammar checker the hassle of noting each lower case word that follows Love. I instead left it as Crazy, Stupid, Love]
Director: Glenn Ficara and John Requa
Notable Cast: Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, Analeigh Tipton, Jonah Bobo, Marisa Tomei, Kevin Bacon
Writer(s): Dan Fogelman
