Usually, I avoid movies like "Crazy, Stupid Love." Most of these "rom-coms" are so predictable that you can easily time your bathroom visits ahead of time and know that you are not missing a single bit of action. A lot of this junk, which usually star some lethal combination of Katherine Heigl, Josh Duhamel, Ryan Reynolds, and Sandra Bullock, features screenplays that are about as welcome as a paper cut.
"Crazy, Stupid Love" is different. A romantic comedy that actually dares its characters to act and talk like adults. The fact that there isn't a single fart joke should merit it the Jean Hersholt Honorary Academy Award alone. You sit there and wonder if screenwriter Dan Fogelman has lost his way in Hollywood. He is actually treating his audience as if they are grown-ups.
This is a film that looks and feels different right from the first frame. It gives us a bunch of actors, who, for the most part, wouldn't normally be caught dead in a flimsy movie like this. Ryan Gosling? Academy Award nominee. Julianne Moore? Academy Award nominee. Marisa Tomei? Academy Award winner, albeit hotly contested. Kevin Bacon? Well, he's connected to some Academy Award winner in six degrees or less.
So, at the outset of "Crazy, Stupid Love," Steve Carell (clearly the weakest link in the cast) and Julianne Moore are getting a divorce. When she takes up with Kevin Bacon, he starts to hit the bar scene with the ultimate lounge lizard Ryan Gosling. The mentoring that goes on between the two is so reminscent of "The Karate Kid" that they even mention it in the script.
As Gosling tutors Carell on how to be the ultimate cool guy in the singles bar, he himself finds himself mysticaly falling for Emma Stone. Oddly, I had no clue who this actress was and then suddenly found myself seeing her in two movies on two successive days. (The other being "The Help" which I'll tackle for you on another blog entry) Stone is adorable and lights up the screen whenever she's on it. She reminds me of Lindsay Lohan without the vodka.
There are the usual "meet cutes" and "misconnections" that generally abound in a film like this. But, somehow and in some way, it all feels new in "Crazy, Stupid Love." A subplot involving Carell and Moore's 13 year-old son and his infatuation with the 17 year-old babysitter is a little uncomfortable but eventually ties into the other story threads as well. Both kids are goofy enough to make this questionable hook-up work.
About 3/4 of the way through the movie, "Crazy, Stupid, Love" permanently won me over with a plot development that I did not see coming for a single instant. Since a film like this usually lays some pipe about such a turn-of-events, I asked some friends who saw the movie if they had been taken by surprise as well. All were left agape as well. Kudos to writer Fogelman again for pulling that off. If you really want to enjoy this movie, make sure nobody tips you off beforehand.
As I wrote earlier, Steve Carell is the one member of the cast who doesn't have the acting chops to rise to the level of the script and his co-stars. A lot of what his character goes through requires an actor capable of providing a multi-layered interpretation. Carell, who is vastly overrated as a performer, can't pull it off completely.
At the end of the movie, he is asked to deliver an awkward speech at an eighth grade graduation and his inability to get all the juice out of that dialogue is the difference between an A- and a B+ for 'Crazy, Stupid Love." That scene was also the first time in the whole film that I checked my watch for the time. A true signal that the characters have overstayed their welcome, even if it's just by five minutes.
Still, if you're up for a fresh turn on a rather pedestrian tale, you'll want to sample "Crazy, Stupid Love." It may not wind up as complete, total love. But, these days, simply liking a movie is sometimes a rarity.
Dinner last night: Pork chop, rice and peas.
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