Dear Hollywood. Stop making movies that want to be Love, Actually. In fact, stop making movies with the word "love" in the title.
Try to remember that Love, Actually wasn't a good movie because of the formula (an ensemble cast variously in love and out of love with each other). It was good pretty much in spite of the formula, in spite of the clichés and predictable outcomes and sappy romantic gestures. So if you try to make movies with just the clichés you're going to end up with a muddled mess.
Sadly, Crazy, Stupid, Love is one of those messes. "Sadly," because there's a good movie somewhere in here. The dialogue is bright and witty, the cast is frequently charming, and the last act, once the final reveal drops and things get really complicated, is surprisingly good. The trouble is how many rom-com clichés you have to slog through to get there.
When we start out, Emily (Julianne Moore, slumming so hard) wants a divorce from her husband Cal (Steve Carell, playing Steve Carell, playing the forty year old virgin, playing, when drunk, Michael Scott). Because this is a movie and not real life, he's in a new apartment the next day. He's also spending all his time at a swanky bar where everyone dresses like they're auditioning for Entourage. There he runs into Jacob (Ryan Gosling, frequently shirtless), a rich young cliché and master of the pick-up line. Jacob, also because this is a movie, decides to take Cal under his wing, and teaches him to reclaim his manhood. Which apparently involves a lot of shopping.
Various other characters weave in and out of this storyline, but for the most part it's Cal and Jacob for the first half of the movie, which isn't a rom-com but a bromance. This is crossing some dangerous streams, since bromances are what dudes see to avoid seeing rom-coms.
Still, it might have worked if Jacob were interesting. Gosling is charming enough in other movies, but here he is playing a silly cliché of himself, sort of The Dos Equis Guy meets Hitch. He's much too young to attempt a James Bond, and most of the time winds up sounding hollow and bratty. His character mellows out a little when he finally hooks up with Hannah (Emma Stone), but that also takes far too long to get to.
To further swell the progress, the babysitter is in love with Cal and Cal's son is in love with the babysitter, Julianne Moore is trying to up her six degrees by sleeping with Kevin Bacon, and Marissa Tomei briefly shows up as herself, I mean as a crazy lady.
Also Hannah has a sassy Asian best friend who disappears halfway through the movie. Where did you go, sassy Asian? The island of misfit female sidekicks? Bridesmaids 2?
Mostly, the movie plays too light too take the sad bits seriously, another reason why it was probably a mistake to stick a bromance in a rom-com, since you can't quite have a tearjerker while making dick jokes (schvantz jokes). There are far too many self-aware moments, with characters talking about being in a romantic comedy, which might be funny if done right but mostly just point out how glaringly artificial everyone is. This isn't a romantic comedy about characters, it's a romantic comedy about characters in a romantic comedy.
The last act does a lot to humanize these caricatures, which almost (but not quite) makes up the boring first half. But still it resorts to a Love, Actually ending, with terrible speeches and romantic gestures about soul mates and such. You'd think in the age of online privacy and sexting and cyberbullying, that the lesson we teach young lovers would be something other than "If she doesn't love you, stalk the shit out of her."
But no, if you lust over a jailbait babysitter, just stalk the shit out of her. If you want to hook up with the (only slightly less jailbait) Emma Stone, just be a shallow douchebag with lots of money. And if you want Julianne Moore, either get divorced and sleep with a lot of women, or be Kevin Bacon.
Kevin Bacon gets what he wants. He's like the Chuck Norris of sex.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
This edition has a Blu-ray edition, DVD edition, and a digital copy (downloadable from Flixster). The Blu-ray has special features, like some fun riffs with Carell and Gosling talking at the bar about being bromantic. There's also a number of funny deleted scenes, and a featurette with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling talking about love and on-screen dating, which is sure to lower your IQ points a little (and probably up your dateability).
"Crazy, Stupid, Love" is on sale November 1, 2011 and is rated PG13. Romance. Directed by Glen Ficarra, John Requa. Written by Dan Fogelman. Starring Emma Stone, Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Gosling, Stacey Asaro, Steve Carell.
