You'll be glad you made the effort on a hot summer night.
Here is the summer movie every studio wishes it had made. Crazy, Stupid, Love
is a lighthearted, funny, sometimes touching confection that will make you
glad you made the effort on a hot summer night. The script delivers serial
surprises that generate eruptions of laughter in an audience enjoying itself
thoroughly. This is the one you're talking about when you see a Rosalind
Russell/Cary Grant comedy from the 1940s and ask "Why can't they make one of
these today?"
Cal Weaver
has it all: a great wife (Julianne Moore as Emily), good kids (watch Jonah Bobo
as Robbie), a steady job, and a nice house. On a night out for dinner, Emily
announces that she wants a divorce. As Cal approaches the rented moving truck,
Emily says, "You have trouble in reverse; can I back it out of the driveway for
you?" They know each other well.
Cal spends
his new time in a sophisticated bar full of beautiful women in five inch heels
and the well dressed men who approach them. Jacob (Ryan Gosling), a poster boy
for men's fashion, begins to observe the grieving sad sack Cal as he sits at the
bar in his youth grunge - oversized Polo and New Balance. Moved by the scent of
failure, Jacob decides to become Cal's Henry Higgins. He will teach him how to
dress, how to talk, and how to pick up women in the bar. After Cal decides to
cooperate, he discards his clothes along with that badge of mediocrity: the
Velcro wallet. "Be better than the gap," Jacob intones with compassion.
To simplify
here, let's just say that the humor lies in the connections. The baby sitter
loves the divorced dad who still loves his wife but in his own defense has an
affair with a teacher (Marisa Tomei). The son of the divorced dad loves the baby
sitter while his mom is having an affair with the office accountant (Kevin
Bacon). And Jacob is eyeing Hannah (Emma Stone), an intelligent, newly minted,
uncommon lawyer in the bar (Emma Stone.)
Eventually we
get a glimpse of the real life of Jacob the Womanizer. He reads cereal boxes
while eating alone at the granite counter in his perfect stainless steel kitchen
with a great view of rain pelting against the glass. All this leads to a
masterful getting-to-know-you scene between Cal and Hannah. In a fine ensemble
cast, Ryan Gosling is still a standout, followed closely by Emma Stone. They put
a contemporary spin on the great verbal jousting of the '40s.
The movie has
touching moments at the same time it is plunging into a sea of preposterous
solutions. Sensitivity meets slapstick. Somehow, the chemistry among those on
the filmmaking team - directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, writer Dan
Fogelman - captures both the comedy and the melancholy that runs through all
these very decent people. They hand good material to a cast that knows exactly
what to do with it.
Copyright (c) Illusion