Love is quite
possibly the strongest human emotion and definitely the most misunderstood. The
Bible says love is patient and kind, and Shakespeare says it’s blind. J. Geils
Band tells us it stinks, while Nat King Cole attempts to define love by making
it into an acronym of loosely related phrases.
For centuries, we humans have studied and showcased love through religion, literature, poetry, art, music, movies and more. But we can never seem to agree on the best way to describe the “L-word” or what it even means to be in love.
In 2011, Crazy Stupid Love—directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa—took yet another attempt to give love an explanation.
Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) is shocked when his wife Emily (Julianne Moore) asks for a divorce after 24 years of what he thought was a perfect marriage. Now, lost in the bachelor’s world he left long ago, he doesn’t know if he’ll ever find love again. When he meets the Casanova extraordinaire, Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling), Cal gets a refresher course on lady killing and an extreme makeover, manhood edition.
Meanwhile, Cal and Emily’s son, Robbie (Jonah Bobo), is in the throws of puberty. He’s hung up on his babysitter, Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who is four years his senior and only has eyes for older men… about 30 years older. It’s the classic wanting-what-you-can’t-have plotline, which begins with Cal’s marriage ending and Jacob getting denied sex—probably for the first time in his life—by the pent-up, good-girl Hannah (Emma Stone).
After plenty of pick-up lines, many embarrassing mishaps and some alarming revelations, each character discovers what really matters about this crazy, stupid thing we call love.
At first look, Crazy Stupid Love’s message is painfully blatant: love is a ridiculous plight that makes people insane. (Sorry for the elementary breakdown of the already obvious, but bear with me here.) This film, with its remarkable writing and all-star cast, takes viewers far past its face value. Much more poignant than your average rom-com, Crazy Stupid Love gives a thought-provoking portrayal of love’s paradox.
Much of this film’s success is due to the writer, Dan Fogelman. Surprisingly, Fogelman’s previous hit screenplays were all animated family features—most notably Cars, Bolt and Tangled. The dialogue is—thankfully—never crude, but it does detach Crazy Stupid Love from Fogelman’s past Disney classics, in which only the occasional innuendo is thrown in for parents to get a laugh, too.
Sometimes the humor is wry, like when Jacob tells Cal, “The war between the sexes is over. We won the second women started doing pole dancing for exercise.” Other times, it’s just wonderfully crafted. In the opening scene, Cal and Emily are out to eat, deciding what to get for dessert, and Cal suggests they both say what they want at the count of three; he says, “three,” and she says, “I want a divorce,” as he says, “crème brûlée.”
The screenplay is a conglomerate of storylines occurring simultaneously, but the connection between the character’s personal chronicles is seamlessly woven. The good writing, when paired with smooth editing, puts little pressure on the viewer to keep track of each individual story in order to make sense of the entire movie’s narrative.
Because the story is completely character driven, good acting is the core that holds Crazy Stupid Love together, which at its essence is a portrait of organic relationships and believable—albeit often outrageously hilarious—situations.
Carell plays his classic fatherly role, similar to that in Dan in Real Life and is much more likeable than as his more ludicrous characters in The Office or Anchorman. His honest acting earns his character, Cal, the much-deserved sympathy for a man who just got cheated on and left by his wife.
Gosling tackles his character Jacob’s developmental journey with amazing ease. We’ve seen him be the sweet yet profound lover before in The Notebook, but here, he also perfectly portrays the womanizer we all love to hate (or hate that we love).
Moore and Stone’s characters get significantly less screen time, which contradicts their usual roles as leading women. But as they have in every other film, they play their parts so believably it feels that character must be who they are in real life.
Although younger actors can often dampen the strength of a movie’s casting, Bobo and Tipton hold their own among the well-renowned stars in the cast. Not a single line delivered in this film sounds scripted.
That’s because Crazy Stupid Love is so well scripted. It gives viewers everything they could ask for in a romantic comedy. There’s smart humor, situational irony, touching details and even tear-jerking moments (for the easily tear-jerked). It’s a movie that appeals to everyone—transcending generational and gender gaps.
Crazy Stupid Love doesn’t necessarily explain love any better than previous attempts, but it does add another piece to the puzzle. It doesn’t make love seem fanciful or cryptic. Instead, it demonstrates the realities of love and how crazy and stupid those realities often feel to those in the throes of it.
Crazy Stupid Love is a movie you’ll want to watch more than once and one you’ll tell others is a “must-see.” It’s more than worth watching, a movie that will stick with you because it’s just as enlightening as it is brilliantly funny.
For centuries, we humans have studied and showcased love through religion, literature, poetry, art, music, movies and more. But we can never seem to agree on the best way to describe the “L-word” or what it even means to be in love.
In 2011, Crazy Stupid Love—directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa—took yet another attempt to give love an explanation.
Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) is shocked when his wife Emily (Julianne Moore) asks for a divorce after 24 years of what he thought was a perfect marriage. Now, lost in the bachelor’s world he left long ago, he doesn’t know if he’ll ever find love again. When he meets the Casanova extraordinaire, Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling), Cal gets a refresher course on lady killing and an extreme makeover, manhood edition.
Meanwhile, Cal and Emily’s son, Robbie (Jonah Bobo), is in the throws of puberty. He’s hung up on his babysitter, Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who is four years his senior and only has eyes for older men… about 30 years older. It’s the classic wanting-what-you-can’t-have plotline, which begins with Cal’s marriage ending and Jacob getting denied sex—probably for the first time in his life—by the pent-up, good-girl Hannah (Emma Stone).
After plenty of pick-up lines, many embarrassing mishaps and some alarming revelations, each character discovers what really matters about this crazy, stupid thing we call love.
At first look, Crazy Stupid Love’s message is painfully blatant: love is a ridiculous plight that makes people insane. (Sorry for the elementary breakdown of the already obvious, but bear with me here.) This film, with its remarkable writing and all-star cast, takes viewers far past its face value. Much more poignant than your average rom-com, Crazy Stupid Love gives a thought-provoking portrayal of love’s paradox.
Much of this film’s success is due to the writer, Dan Fogelman. Surprisingly, Fogelman’s previous hit screenplays were all animated family features—most notably Cars, Bolt and Tangled. The dialogue is—thankfully—never crude, but it does detach Crazy Stupid Love from Fogelman’s past Disney classics, in which only the occasional innuendo is thrown in for parents to get a laugh, too.
Sometimes the humor is wry, like when Jacob tells Cal, “The war between the sexes is over. We won the second women started doing pole dancing for exercise.” Other times, it’s just wonderfully crafted. In the opening scene, Cal and Emily are out to eat, deciding what to get for dessert, and Cal suggests they both say what they want at the count of three; he says, “three,” and she says, “I want a divorce,” as he says, “crème brûlée.”
The screenplay is a conglomerate of storylines occurring simultaneously, but the connection between the character’s personal chronicles is seamlessly woven. The good writing, when paired with smooth editing, puts little pressure on the viewer to keep track of each individual story in order to make sense of the entire movie’s narrative.
Because the story is completely character driven, good acting is the core that holds Crazy Stupid Love together, which at its essence is a portrait of organic relationships and believable—albeit often outrageously hilarious—situations.
Carell plays his classic fatherly role, similar to that in Dan in Real Life and is much more likeable than as his more ludicrous characters in The Office or Anchorman. His honest acting earns his character, Cal, the much-deserved sympathy for a man who just got cheated on and left by his wife.
Gosling tackles his character Jacob’s developmental journey with amazing ease. We’ve seen him be the sweet yet profound lover before in The Notebook, but here, he also perfectly portrays the womanizer we all love to hate (or hate that we love).
Moore and Stone’s characters get significantly less screen time, which contradicts their usual roles as leading women. But as they have in every other film, they play their parts so believably it feels that character must be who they are in real life.
Although younger actors can often dampen the strength of a movie’s casting, Bobo and Tipton hold their own among the well-renowned stars in the cast. Not a single line delivered in this film sounds scripted.
That’s because Crazy Stupid Love is so well scripted. It gives viewers everything they could ask for in a romantic comedy. There’s smart humor, situational irony, touching details and even tear-jerking moments (for the easily tear-jerked). It’s a movie that appeals to everyone—transcending generational and gender gaps.
Crazy Stupid Love doesn’t necessarily explain love any better than previous attempts, but it does add another piece to the puzzle. It doesn’t make love seem fanciful or cryptic. Instead, it demonstrates the realities of love and how crazy and stupid those realities often feel to those in the throes of it.
Crazy Stupid Love is a movie you’ll want to watch more than once and one you’ll tell others is a “must-see.” It’s more than worth watching, a movie that will stick with you because it’s just as enlightening as it is brilliantly funny.
