Crazy, Stupid, Love

5/5 

A brilliant romantic comedy that delivers to all ages, the saving grace of this genre!

Cal (Carell) gets the shock of his life when one night, his wife for 25 years, Emily (Moore) asks for a divorce after sleeping with a co-worker. Cal then had a downward spin as he tries to understand what has happened to their marriage. Frequenting a bar to forget and talk about David Lindhagen (his wife’s co-worker whom she slept with), to just about anyone in the bar. This bar rant of all his bitterness have led for him to be noticed by Jacob (Gosling), a hot bachelor determined to mentor him into today’s dating world. Jacob repackaged him into a whole new Cal but despite this new found world of womanizing, can he really be happy when he’s still caught up with Emily?

Crazy, Stupid, Love is different from almost all the romantic comedies of the past decade for it presents a realistic perspective of what love and relationships are all about. Typical elements of a romantic comedy were still present in this movie but it sets itself apart from all the others with the way the geniuses of directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa executed on screen a formulaic plot we’ve seen a million times before. There’s still the understandable feel of predictability given its genre but they complemented this with hilarious twists in the story. With this, they were able to still create a certain level of suspension in disbelief which is very rare in romantic comedies these days.

In fact, the glory of this movie is in the way it capitalized on its characters and not the general feel of love euphoria aka kilig that most movies of this genre tend to focus on. Instead of relying on kisses all over the place, it revolved around the real, genuine drama of a couple going through a divorce, or a new found intimacy with someone, or the bittersweet madness of a first love. The movie presented the conflicts of the plot in such a way that it highlighted the personalities and inner struggles of each character. It is also more than worthy to point out how cleverly thought the connections of each characters are. It’s almost seamless that it did add to the movies attempt at humor. What’s also so lovable about this movie is how it didn’t try to exaggerate everything. The few words and those little moments of silence that disguises as a dramatic scene were actually the highest points of romance in the movie.

A big credit of this movie goes out to the calibre performance of its cast. Steve Carell gave a very good performance in this movie. His acting and profoundness in facial expressions gave the character of Cal depth in terms of sincerity. Julianne Moore is without a doubt an actress who can give any role justice. Her wisdom as an actress matched Carell’s wittiness on screen. Their talents gave the pairing and the story so much authenticity. Ryan Gosling sizzled in this movie and gave the hot bachelor-womanizer-sex addict role a deeper sense of worth. The character of Jacob is in every word perfect for him. Just by his new all-buffed up image the character is already perfect for him, this is still excluding his acting. Ryan is definitely one of the most versatile Hollywood actors of today. Emma Stone gave an equally good performance as Hannah and exuded a great deal of chemistry with Gosling on screen.

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a romantic comedy that knows what it wants and delivers perfectly the message it’s trying to impart. It tackles different faces of love in a broad and general sense that it caters to a very diverse audience. This movie distinguishes itself from other movies of its genre because it doesn’t try to solve each love problem there is. It also doesn’t paint a picture of an unrealistic happily ever after story but it does give its viewers a grasp of the realities of loving. Crazy, Stupid, Love also solidifies the idea of a soulmate. It tells the story of how CRAZY and mysterious it really is, it shows us how STUPID we all become chasing that elusive one great LOVE of our lives…THE ONE!