Crazy, Stupid, Love.
AMC Lowes Gramercy Park, July 29, 2011
Movie #50 for 2011
Like most women with a uterus of a certain disposition, I need to watch romantic comedies once a month. Which is where Crazy, Stupid, Love. comes in. My uterus and I were deceived, however, and Crazy, Stupid, Love. is not really a romantic comedy at all.
The cast of Crazy, Stupid, Love. intrigued me - two powerhouse dramatic actors (RYAN GOSLING, Blue Valentine and JULIANNE MOORE*, The Kids Are All Right) in a romantic comedy? Alongside broad comedy old-hats like STEVE CARELL and EMMA STONE (Easy A)? Well, I guess. But I forgot that Carell also does a good line in sympathetically pathetic, and that Stone is, well, great. Directed by GLENN FICARRA and JOHN REQUA (both co-write and directed I Love You, Phillip Morris), the comedy script of Crazy, Stupid, Love. is played almost entirely as a straight drama with quiet earnestness and dull heartbreak prevailing over slapstick. And for the most part it’s very effective.
Carell and Moore play Cal and Emily, a long-married couple who are now sad, tired and separated. Trying to fight off loneliness, Cal begins to visit a local bar where super-stud Jacob (Gosling) takes pity on him and gives him a makeover. As Cal’s lady-killing starts to take off, Jacob’s stalls when he falls for Hannah (Stone). In among this, Emily half-heartedly dates David (KEVIN BACON), the co-worker she cheated on Cal with; Cal and Emily’s son Robbie (JONAH BOBO, Zathura: A Space Adventure) is stubbornly trying to woo his sister’s babysitter Jessica (pouty-lipped, stick-thin ANALIEGH TIPTON); and Jessica is infatuated with Cal. It’s more of a love tangle than a triangle.
Like the underrated 2009 film City Island, there is a large, dramatic, ridiculous and incredibly funny climax where every character’s grievances are aired at once, but the rest of the film is so melancholy that it is a strange blip on an otherwise quietly dramatic radar. And, although there is the required Grand Romantic Gesture, the ending remains ambiguous. Hardly the standard romantic comedy formula.
Crazy, Stupid, Love. is a strange mix of elements that amount to a brave attempt at something a little different. Many of my co-audience found it unsatisfying (I’m extrapolating from their overheard comments afterwards, of course), but it worked just fine for me and my uterus.
* I know Julianne Moore has done romantic comedy in the past, but by and large they’re so awful I’d prefer to forget them.
