Crazy, Stupid, Love
Whilst romantic comedies which focus their attentions on three or four storylines are nothing new, few have such a spectacularly wide-ranging success rate as big-budget ensemble number Crazy Stupid Love. Focusing on the development of as many as five separate relationships to varying degrees, it truly runs the gauntlet of quality, from the moving and the funny to the mediocre and – worst of all – the catastrophically inappropriate.
All of the film’s plot strands are tenuously and tangentially connected, and at the head of the chain sit Cal and Emily Weaver (Steve Carrell and Julianne Moore). The opening sequence sees Emily demand a divorce during a meal out. The pair head home to break the news to the kids, and it’s at this point we find babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton) as the object of the affections of the Weavers’ 13-year old son Robbie (a stiflingly unlikeable Jonah Bobo). To round out the unsettlingly prevailing theme of age-inappropriate affection, it appears Jessica’s got some feelings of her own: for Cal. This is introduced as something understated and slightly endearing on the part of Jessica, but as the film progresses, these two strands veer unapologetically into uncomfortable terrain.
As he attempts to recover from the end of his marriage, Cal hits the bars, and soon meets Jacob (the ever-excellent Ryan Gosling). An impossibly charismatic womaniser, he takes Cal under his wing and sets out to teach him a few tricks of the trade. This is probably the film’s most successful onscreen relationship: Gosling and Carrell work off each other to superbly convincing effect. Cal eventually succeeds in bedding a stranger named Kate (Marisa Tomei) in a move that will provide unexpected complications further down the line. Tomei and Carrell’s scenes together are amusing, but Kate’s character is the poorest and least believable in terms of writing: she’s the only one that registers as a caricature.
Our other main plot strand centres on a developing relationship between Jacob and a young lawyer named Hannah (Emma Stone). Having initially spurned his advances, she eventually comes around to the idea after breaking up with her boyfriend Richard (a hilariously starchy Josh Groban). The scenes at the beginning of their relationship are high points: Gosling and Stone’s onscreen chemistry is remarkable, and together they make the kind of couple you wish were in your circle of friends.
With all of its innumerable plot strands in a state of semi-development, Crazy Stupid Love delivers an inspired plot twist in its final quarter that could have coaxed out some great moments. Regrettably, the scene that follows dials up the “crazy” and the “stupid” to such a ridiculous extent that the film never really recovers. As it drags itself towards its predictable, hackneyed conclusion, the goodwill built up by some of the finer earlier scenes becomes something of a distant memory. Furthermore, one of our “happy endings” comes with such a spectacularly askew moral compass that it’s difficult to tell exactly how we were expected to respond.
All in all, Crazy Stupid Love benefits from some truly excellent performances (most notably from Gosling, Stone and Carrell), a strong script and a handful of well-written characters. Unfortunately, its determination to pair off its cast into prospective pairs results in a fragmented feel to the narrative, and a handful of catastrophic wrong-turns means that what is intended as light-hearted whimsy comes off as genuinely uncomfortable viewing. This is something of a mixed bag, and if less of an emphasis had been placed on the trials and tribulations of the younger peripheral characters, Crazy Stupid Love would have emerged as an excellent 90 minute film, rather than a mediocre and occasionally maddening 120-minute one.
