This is a tough movie to review. I actually enjoyed Crazy, Stupid, Love, but for everything there is to like about it, there's something that's off about it.
Steve Carell and Julianne Moore are a couple that have clearly lost their spark. The movie starts with Julianne Moore's character admitting she had an affair and she wants a divorce.
Steve Carell moves out and then starts hanging out at a local bar. He's a sad sack at this point, blabbing to anyone and everyone at the bar that he's going through a divorce and that his wife cheated on him. A young, ladykiller-type, played by Ryan Gosling, takes pity on him and decides to help him get his manhood back.
Their time together is what works best in the movie. However, my complaint is that the trailer advertises this aspect the most. There were long stretches of the movie where they weren't together or where Gosling isn't in the movie at all. I would have preferred the majority of the movie to be about the two of them.
Oh and please tell me where in the hell this magical bar they were hanging out is? It appears to be a local bar as you see many of the same people there over and over, but it's super hip and just filled with hot people. You see a montage of both of them picking up girl after girl in the same bar night after night. You'd think after a while, you'd have a bit of a reputation and have to hit up a different bar from time to time. It just seems like I never see places like this in reality. At least not out here in the burbs.
Anyway, back to the movie. There were too many subplots that could have just been eliminated. As much as I liked the actors, you could have taken these sequences out of this movie and it would have been a much better film. For example there's a whole subplot with the babysitter and her family that could have been removed. It wasn't that Analeigh Tipton's performance was bad, it just wasn't central enough to the main plot.
It seems like this movie wasn't edited very well. It would spend a bunch of time on one aspect of the story and then move to another, when you had just gotten invested in that part. They'd come back to threads later in the movie that you had almost completely forgotten about or just didn't care about.
I really liked the cast. The kid that plays Steve Carell's son, Jonah Bobo, was pretty good in parts. Julianne Moore was fine, as was Kevin Bacon. I actually thought Emma Stone's character felt a little underwritten. They tried to give her own subplot and that just kind of felt tacked on. She didn't really need it for you to like her character. In fact, the way she handled herself in one of the scenes, I thought she was a little nutty. It was just unnecessary.
There's something that happens towards the end that while I found it funny, it really seemed forced. You'll see what I'm talking about when you get around to watching this. Then, the ultimate end was just kind of sappy and felt cliched.
Overall, I still enjoyed Crazy, Stupid, Love, but again, all of these random subplots could have been removed and it would have been a much tighter film. It also could have allowed them to focus on the main characters more.
Overall, I still enjoyed Crazy, Stupid, Love, but again, all of these random subplots could have been removed and it would have been a much tighter film. It also could have allowed them to focus on the main characters more.
It's not a bad thing to see as a matinee, but if you rented this you'd probably be happier with the rental.
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