Modified From http://www.impawards.com/2011/crazy_stupid_love_ver5.html

Crazy, stupid, love. Three words that are commonly associated with romantic comedies. Crazy. Stupid. Love. does not fail to deliver these three words. The story follows Cal (Steve Carell) who finds out his wife, Emily (Julianne Moore), cheated on him and she wants a divorce. Cal who is still in love with Emily complies but can’t get over the fact that she cheated on him. In comes Jacob (Ryan Gosling) to try and help Cal get out of his rut.

The title Crazy. Stupid. Love. not only describes what to expect it the movie, it also describes how the movie is organized. The movie starts out crazy, then gets stupid and finally ends in love (it’s a romantic comedy after all! So trust me and don’t expect it to end like Hamlet). Overall the pacing of the movie turned out decent but it did suffer from trying to get enough screen time for all the different actors.

Speaking of the actors, Steve Carell who plays the lead role, plays Steve Carell. Unfortunately Steve is pretty much typecast and he is still the odd goofball that barely can walk without making a fool of himself. There were moments in the movie where he was able to break out of that mold but nothing very drastic, at the end of the day he is still Steve Carell.

The movie also features other well known stars such as Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine, The Notebook), Julian Moore (30 Rock, As the World Turns), Emma Stone (Easy A, Superbad), Marisa Tomei (What Women Want, The Wrestler), Kevin Bacon (Apollo 13, X-men: First Class) but as I said earlier they had limited amounts of screen time. An example of is this is Emma Stone’s character doesn’t show up until halfway through the movie. It would have been great to see a little more screen time for all these actors and a little bit less of seeing Cal feel sorry for himself.

The one character I ended up rooting for was Robbie (Jonah Bobo) who is Cal’s son that has a huge crush on his older babysitter. At first I thought it was just going to be a one shot gag in the story but the writers managed to weave his story well into the movie. He was able to convince me that he truly was in love with his babysitter and would even fight through the gates of hell to win her heart.

Overall I would say this movie is a decent watch and if you do not expect more that what the title offers you should have a great time. The movie does include a train wreck scene that is almost as big as the one that was shown in Super 8. That was by far my favorite part of the movie and I couldn’t stop laughing. Unfortunately with the comedic aspect of this movie is pretty limiting. If you watch the trailer you might expect the movie to be full of comedic gold, those are actually the only funny parts of the movie with the exception of the train wreck I mentioned earlier. My suggestion is to just watch the trailer and wait for the movie to come out on DVD/streaming.

 

Image modified from Imp Awards

 
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