Crazy, Stupid, Love is an amazing film, one that has remarkably emerged from a major Hollywood studio better at producing formulaic works of mediocrity. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from a feisty indie filmmaker, but it stars Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, and the now ubiquitous Ryan Gosling. It’s an engaging, fun, moving film that playfully unveils the confusion and insanity of romance and married life. It’s the sweetest, funniest romantic comedy since “Love, Actually."
The film casts Steve Carell as a total milquetoast, Cal Weaver. When Julianne Moore’s character, his wife of over 20 years, blurts out a confession about an indiscretion with a co-worker (as played by the ever sleazy Kevin Bacon), Carell simply jumps out of the car. Fast forward a few weeks, and Carell is spending his nights drowning his sorrows in a cocktail lounge-pickup joint, sipping his painkiller of choice – vodka cranberries – and loudly lamenting his marital woes and completely clueless about the dating scene. He emits the saddest sound of the entire animal kingdom, the cuckolded American warbler.
Nearby, a handsome pickup artist, Jacob Palmer (as played by Ryan Gosling), is unable to bear the pain of this wounded animal and offers to teach Carell how to get laid again. The transformation of Cal Weaver is an amazing site to behold. The key line delivered by Palmer, hits home pretty hard - “The reason your wife cheated on you is because you lost sight of what it means to be man, a husband and a lover.” The kind of words you'd expect at a tantra workshop where you take a long hard look at your life, not a fluffy romantic comedy. Suddenly, we can see a hapless Carrell dressed like the nerd he is, and woefully underequipped to compete in today’s romance market – a man who stopped trying to seduce his own wife decades ago, a man who didn’t get the memo that you had to stay competitive to keep your wife happy, a man who simply gave up on the possibility of being sexy surviving marriage.
As Palmer leads Weaver on a shopping spree makeover, at one point Weaver resists, and squeaks, “I’m good on jeans, I can get them at the Gap.” Palmer then grabs him and says, “Those jeans give you a 'Mom butt'. I want to hear you say it… You’re better than the Gap. You’re better than the Gap!” You could almost hear The Gap’s stock price plummeting outside the theater, like undershirt sales after Clark Gable emerged barechested in the 1934 film "It Happened One Night."
Eventually this odd couple’s private Karate Kid tutelage pays off – with Gosling even providing a nod to Mr. Miyagi by including a wax on/wax off joke – and Weaver realizes that he’s actually learned a few tricks for not driving away hot chicks, and maybe even picking a few of them up for a one night stand or two. His first conquest comes with Kate (Marisa Tomei), a schoolteacher who is sexually aroused by men who tell the truth… but doesn't respond so well after Cal’s inability to call her after their one night stand. The transformation of Weaver is complete, and we see a man who now has a shot at controlling his sexual destiny. It's actually a beautiful thing.
After the lessons are over, Palmer meets a no-bullshit, attractive young woman, played by Emma Stone, who sweeps him off his feet after he literally does the same to her. The best line of the film happens when Gosling takes off his shirt to reveal a perfect washboard six pack. [Ed note: I won’t spoil it for you. Go see the movie.] Anyway, in a very tender scene, Stone's character playfully encourages Palmer to tell the truth and they spend most of their first night confessing their secrets, coughing them up like little hairballs of truth to offer to each other. At the end of the film, we can see how his relationship with Weaver has equally transformed him. Actually, all of the actors in this film deliver wonderfully vulnerable and emotionally rich performances.
The closing act of this film resolves all these relationships and situations – and several other complex and clever subplots – with some pretty breath-taking surprises that will open your heart. The savvy screenwriter, Dan Fogelman – in his first time script for a live action film – he wrote the scripts for the animated films Cars and Tangled, learned from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing exactly how to resolve all the misunderstandings of Act II, as love triumphs and you can’t help but celebrate the miraculous and mysterious ways of love. The inside scoop on this film is that the script not only sold for a massive $2.5 million, but it was an example of everything going right in Hollywood - what I can a "benestrophe" rather than your normal catastrophe in film production. Instead of the normal 'development hell' that requires a five year turnaround time for the producers to finally get all the ducks in a row... this film made it from script completion to greenlit in a couple of weeks and the film was in production in under a month. Truly a miracle and blessing!
The only downside to this film is that the perfect closer line for pick up artists, “Let’s get out of here” is now officially, and forever more, unusable in a bar. Nevertheless, it's something you should put on the list to see as soon as possible, and in a big theater too, complete with popcorn! Don't wait for it in DVD!
More: crazystupidlove.warnerbros.com
