Just a few minutes into the blissfully entertaining crowd-pleaser Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011, Glenn Ficarra & John Requa), middle-aged suburbanite Cal (Steve Carell) is thrust into single life unprepared after his wife, Emily (Julianne Moore), who he's been with ever since high school, asks for a divorce. There's something inherently comical about the sight of Cal drinking by himself at a swank singles bar while clad in a baggy suit and worn sneakers, but, more importantly, Ficarra & Requa and Carell recognize the inescapable sadness of the situation. The directing team lingers in the pauses between Cal's broadly funny drunken outbursts for a couple beats more than conventionally minded filmmakers would, and Carell plays the loneliness behind the shitfaced bluster with real ache.
The understanding that frothy studio entertainment only really takes flight when executed with real (and ocassionally dark) human feeling has clearly united the directors and terrific ensemble cast of Crazy, Stupid, Love. The movie's script, by Disney veteran Dan Fogelman (Tangled), is rich in characterization and intricate in its farcical structure, but it's also flawed, a bit too eager-to-please, and filled with banter that's roughly 10% more witty than that found in the established-earlier-in-the-blog-as-50%-clever romantic comedy Friends With Benefits (better to be 10% below, say, The Philadelphia Story). So that makes this a case of a film's stars and makers taking a sturdy but overly familiar blueprint and crafting something improbably unique and fresh from it.
Fogelman does deserve credit for taking a more democratic approach to romcom formula that allows for a whole gaggle of characters, not just two destined-to-be-together lovebirds, to pursue romance. In addition to Cal and Emily, there's Jacob (Ryan Gosling), an impeccably sculpted and groomed player charitable enough to take Cal under his wing and teach the divorcee how to score with female clubgoers. For all of the notches on Jacob's bedpost, there is one cute redhead that "got away" and could see through Jacob's practiced moves--shrewd aspiring lawyer Hannah (Emma Stone), who is banking on a marriage proposal from her milquetoast boyfriend (an oddly cast but appropriately dorky Josh Groban).
As long as Crazy, Stupid, Love focuses on the quartet of Cal, Emily, Jacob, and Hannah, and their various romantic entanglements, it stands as a first-rate middlebrow comedy. Carell gives his most affecting and well-rounded big-screen performance since The 40-Year-Old Virgin, refusing to overplay either the humor or pathos of his character and effortlessly clicking with Gosling in a heaven-sent buddy-movie pairing. Gosling invests this rare comedic performance with the same depth and precision he brings to his stunning dramatic work. He has every gesture and strutting step of this confident shark down cold, and also makes Jacob's inevitable third-act transformation wholly believable. Stone bubbles over with energy and intelligence as Hannah, and is especially lovable in a scene where she finally succumbs to Jacob's charms and yet can't stop from drunkenly rambling when Jacob takes her to his pad. There remains no question Stone is a bona fide star. Moore gets a little less to work with than Carell, Gosling, and Stone, but still uses her acting powers to offer a window into the conflict inside of Emily's head. Moore makes the character a complicated woman trying to figure out the source of her unhappiness instead of someone to be judged for throwing Cal out on his ass. Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei (showing off her killer comic timing after excellent dramatic work in recent films like The Wrestler and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead), and relative newcomer Liza Lapira (a tart-tongued wonder as Hannah's best friend) contribute fine support to the story threads dominated by the quartet of Carell, Gosling, Stone, and Moore.
But a subplot involving Cal and Emily's 13-year-old son Robbie's (Jonah Bobo) incurable infatuation with older babysitter Jessica (the endearingly gawky Analeigh Tipton) doesn't quite work, both because a) the conceit of a wise-in-the-ways-of-love kid has clearly been lifted from Love Actually in a shamefully derivative manner and b) said conceit has grown tired and irritating considering Love Actually came out a full eight years ago and this isn't the first movie in those eight years to steal the trope from Richard Curtis' irresistible British ensemble comedy.
The conception of Robbie is hardly the only overly recognizable element in Fogelman's screenplay. The writer aims for classic farce in the movie's elaborately orchestrated climax, wherein the movie's large cast of characters violently converge due to a series of misunderstandings and withheld secrets. I really admired Fogelman's construction of the set piece, and the timing with which the entire cast executes it, but it's proven to be way too old-school for some I've discussed the film with. As for a heartfelt public speech a central character makes in the film's concluding ten minutes, I'm gonna have to side with detractors who claim it's one of Fogelman's unsuccessful Hollywood-y touches. It's too calculated to be moving.
The reason why Fogelman's script is lucky to have been brought to the screen by Ficarra & Requa is that the directors' anti-Hollywood impulses provide necessary balance. The writing team's first directorial effort, the Jim Carrey-Ewan McGregor dark-romantic-comedy vehicle I Love You, Phillip Morris wasn't perfect but announced Ficarra & Requa as possessing a distinctive and refreshing comic sensibility that emphasizes off-kilter gags and the so-dark-it's-nearly-unfunny desperation of the characters. With Crazy, Stupid, Love, the directors' odd bits of visual humor (i.e. beginning a scene via a hilarious slo-mo push-in to Jacob standing and scarfing down a slice of Sbarro's pizza in the Century City mall; naturally, Gosling even looks cool eating a greasy slice of pizza) and collaboration with the cast to infuse the light proceedings with real emotional gravity (the sequence depicting Jacob and Hannah's first night together is a highlight--funny, touching, real, and edited with such grace as to be romantic summer-movie magic on par with Soderbergh, Clooney, and Lopez's "Gary and Celeste" set piece in Out of Sight) make the film a sweet, tasty romcom confection. I'm not in love with it, but I am in crazy, stupid like-a-lot with it. Grade: B+
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