Crazy Stupid Love

  Crazy Stupid Love has an impressive ensemble cast anchored by Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore and Steve Carell.  Cal, played wonderfully by Carell, is being divorced by his wife Emily (Moore), who admits she has been cheating on him with her coworker David Lindhagen (Kevin Bacon).  The divorce is completely her idea and it sends Cal into an alcoholic tailspin, where he is approached by debauchee Jacob (Ryan Gosling) at a stylish bar.  Jacob offers, more like force-feeds, Cal advice on how to pick up women.  It is ridiculously uninteresting.
  Enter Hannah, played by Emma Stone, a twenty-something who just passed the bar exam and is ready to get out of a dead-end relationship with a nerdy loser played by Josh Groban (big shocker: Groban plays a nerdy loser).  Hannah is approached by Jacob one evening and he smoothly shoots her a line out of his bag of insanely stupid, yet effective, pick-up lines.  She wants nothing to do with him at first, but soon comes running back, begging for him to take her home.
   I loved Stone in previous films, especially Easy-A and Zombieland, and she is loveable here too.  This movie would certainly benefit if she were featured in it a bit more.  I didn't really buy into her relationship with Gosling - I felt that it was way underdeveloped.  The reason that it was not explored enough is because this movie is jam-packed with plot.  There was just too much going on for me to really grab onto even one of its hyper-layered story lines.  Marisa Tomei has a silly ten-minute performance as a dim-witted teacher.  That is two movies in a row for Tomei that I felt she was miscast (The terrible Lincoln Lawyer being the other one).  Bacon has a great face-to-face scene with Carell's son, but other than that he is underused. 
   After all of that, I will say that I liked this movie.  Carell is one of the best comedy actors alive.  In Crazy Stupid Love, he combines the silliness, sincerity, vulnerability and charm that we see in his characters in The Office, Dan in Real Life, and The 40-Year Old Virgin.  He is a very good actor with impressive range.  Gosling has showed us signs of excellence as well (Lars and the Real Girl, Blue Valentine), but plays to the stereotype here so much that I couldn't buy into it.  He reminded me of Will Smith in Hitch (which I disliked very much).  Another reason that I liked this movie is because of a magnificent twist, which I did not see coming at all.  Twists are great; we all love them, and this movie has a really good one.
  There is a meta aspect to this film.  At times, it seems to acknowledge that it is being mundanely stereotypical.  For example, when Gosling's character is asked to explain why he feels the way he does about Hannah, he says something along the lines of "are you really going to make me do this?"  I appreciate this and give the director points for realizing the campiness.