Crazy, Stupid, Love Reviews

I have nothing personal against Rom-coms, it's just that sometimes a film really surprises you in a good way or it falls flat on its face. Crazy, Stupid, Love fortunately belongs in the former category. If there was anything that lets Crazy, Stupid, Love down, it was that the film stumbles a little in the final act.

Everything else however works, and the result is a surprising and hugely enjoyable Rom-com. The filming is never cheap and often stylish and pretty and the scenery is very striking. The soundtrack also compliments the film very well, as does the direction. The story is very clever too with seldom a dull part, only the final act has signs of inconsistency.

For me, what lifts a Rom-com especially is the cast, the chemistry and the quality of the script. Luckily, Crazy, Stupid, Love succeeds in all three of those areas. The script is funny in a witty, droll and infectious sense, with plenty of moments to warm your heart and touch you too. The chemistry of the actors is also there and very believably done.

Steve Carrell is brilliant here, while I do consider him talented with good material, I don't think he has been this good in a while. Ryan Gosling exudes charisma in his role, Julianne Moore and Emma Stone are very charming and Marisa Tomei while perhaps over-the-top is memorable.

In conclusion, very surprising and really well done. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Two words:
Ryan. Gosling.
Hot damn! Along with being insanely hot he is an incredible actor!
And then there is Emma Stone. And she too is such an amazing actress.
Throw the two of them together and you have sizzling chemistry and a great movie ;)

Mundane premise with fun acting that sells it. The characters, while stereotypical, are well executed. Steve Carell as the utterly sympathetic man losing his marriage is believable. His transformation from the even more stereotypical ladies man of Ryan Gossling is less so. Gosslings similar transformation is also unbelievable. That said, plot comes together well.

Amazing film. Great story line - who woulda known!
I'm going to watch it again ASAP. Probably one of my favs. The cast was great - hilarious !

that's the way it should be a romantic comedy.

A lighter side of the LOVE shown in movie, the movie rotate about th concept of love and is good one. It is tale of family inwhich couple marriage a love marriage is dintegrating after 25 years. There are some odd things but anyhow a watcahable comedy.

It takes a while to warm itself up, but it easily rises above the half-formed formulas of most modern day romantic comedies (which use both words incredibly loosely). It’s funny and charming in spots, yet it never fully engaged or warmed me up to it. The insistence that the entire storylines and assortment of characters tie together somehow makes it all get a bit too conventional. Tying the film down to a structure that hinders its emotional impact when so many scenes ring with devastating emotional truth and insight makes it so that the film never has a chance to recover or overcome this rhetorical bondage.

But let’s give praise where it is due, much of the cast brings their best to the material and can work wonders out of some scenes which weren’t set-up to be the big emotional set pieces. The romantic geometry at play is never really interesting since we know from the beginning that everything will end up how it should with everyone getting, more or less, what they wanted. But back to the performances: Steve Carell, like many comedians before him, is an underrated dramatic performer (see Little Miss Sunshine) who brings a tremendous amount of believability and heft to his role. Julianne Moore is always reliable, but her cheating spouse in The Kids Are Alright was a more interesting and fully formed character. Ryan Gosling is incredibly sexy, charming, sexy, able to be both dramatic and funny when needed, and did I mention sexy? He tries to make the best of the schizophrenic nature of his character, but even his tremendous gifts can’t overcome that obstacle. I have yet to be fully amazed by Emma Stone, she’s never bad and in one sequence she nails her part beautifully, but I have yet to see her do anything really special with a role/performance. The less said about Marisa Tomei, normally a reliably strong supporting and comedic performer, the better. She swings for the rafters in a film that has everyone else looking for the hurt and bruised heart beneath the comedy. She sticks out, but for all the wrong reasons.

Crazy, Stupid, Love occupies that space of good-but-not-great, which is probably one of the more frustrating places for a movie to inhabit since so much of the groundwork for a great movie was there. Maybe if I had ever for a moment felt shocked by a plot twist or thought that the central couple wouldn’t work it out by the end, I would have been more impressed and been more enthusiastic about it. But that’s the movie that could have been made, and this is the movie that was made.

Well, I have to say that this movie wasn't doing much for me other than helping me pass time while working out...until the "Dirty Dancing" moment. Then, like a sucker, I was drawn in, despite all the inevitable, predictable connections between the characters. This movie has a decent cast, though I do not like Analeigh Tipton. I found her to be quite unattractive, way too skinny with a big head, and just not a good actress.

I do enjoy Steve Carell and Emma Stone, and Marisa Tomei was fun to watch in this, though her part was a bit small and anyone could have played it. I don't honestly understand why women find Ryan Gosling attractive, other than, with his shirt off, he's in some pretty fantastic shape. But clothed? The movie as a whole was better than average, but not fantastic/excellent. It's watchable, for one viewing, then time to move on to something else.

Throughout the majority of this generation, there have been many romantic stories that have turned out what we weren’t expecting, and have become a fine accomplishment that will entertain the audience in many emotional ways. Considering that there were already high expectations for the film due to the impressive ensemble cast and intriguing dialogue, the outcome was that it was filled with plenty of laughs, delight and heartbreak that exposes a powerful message and lesson to its audience watching. In most recent memory there have been quite a few films like Crazy Stupid Love that have managed to achieve this and as a result, have gained a few Academy Award wins and nominations (Little Miss Sunshine, Juno and The Kids Are All Right are examples). So I’m glad to say that it deserves its rightful place alongside those other films.


Although Crazy Stupid Love is widely known as a romantic-comedy, when you watch the film and deeply understand what’s going on, it appears to be a romantic-drama on occasions. Sure, there are some pretty hilarious moments, especially from Carell, but most recently with films like this, they are sometimes too serious or too depressing to be humourous. This is not a flaw in the slightest, but there are more dramatic and controversial events within the film than there are funny and humourous ones. So personally, I’d call it more a romantic-drama than a romantic-comedy. The story has many threads and quite a numerous amount of characters where they are all connected somehow (like Love Actually and Valentine’s Day), but one of the most important messages within the film was to show how different love is for couples and for people who are single.


There are a very low number of actors within the film industry that fit brilliantly for comedies and for dramas, but only until Crazy Stupid Love’s release, Steve Carell has now joined the ranks of actors who are in that small list. As for his performance as Cal Weaver, he gives us a performance that is slightly similar to what we have seen from him in the past. However, at the same time, Carell delivers a performance that has perhaps become a breakthrough in his career, and has shown us a more serious side to him as an actor. On small doses, the character of Cal takes us back down memory lane to when Carell gave his universally acclaimed performance in The 40 Year Old Virgin, as Cal has similar characteristics. Because his performance was so heartfelt, genuine and all-round inspiring, reluctantly Steve Carell deserves a shot at the top awards this year (perhaps not an Oscar nomination, but a contender for a Golden Globe or a Critics Choice Award nomination). So, to date, this is easily Steve Carell’s best role. Julianne Moore has in most recent years starred in a lot of Oscar-nominated films where she becomes a strong contender for Best Actress nominations after great performances. As far as her role as Emily in this film is concerned, she was very impressive and gave a very emotional performance as she explicitly demonstrates a good and committed mother but at the same time, in a mid-life crisis regarding love life. The chemistry between Carell and Moore on-screen was so strong that they felt like real-life husband and wife, and you are there feeling and understanding their troubles.


Admittedly not seeing many films starring Ryan Gosling, this was almost like an starting experiment to see what he is like on-screen. Gosling fits perfectly into the role of Jacob as he expresses his own charms to the screen and gives an analysis of what ladies’ men are and what the positives and negatives are of his nature. So, despite having already been nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in Half Nelson and appearing in what could have been another breakthrough role, he is still one of the most underrated young actors of this generation. After already been welcomed into Hollywood with open arms in Easy A, Zombieland and The Help, Emma Stone joins the ranks in a supporting role as she portrays young lawyer Hannah who has quite a quite jaded outlook on love. Stone really is becoming a shining star and brings forth a performance that is just showing what she can do best, and that she is getting even better as more films are being released. Marisa Tomei makes a mild appearance in the film as well as alcoholic schoolteacher and gives a very funny and rather fierce performance. Once being the young child in Zathura who is now blossoming into a young man who could make himself worthy as one of the best child actors of this generation, Jonah Bobo literally blew me away as Robbie. The close bond between Bobo and Carell on-screen felt like a real father-son connection and together they indicate the true meaning of love and how far one would really go for the one they love.


Considering that the impressive ensemble cast and their performances make this film a successful is one thing, but the makers behind the camera also deserve the critical acclaim. Glenn Ficarra and John Requa made themselves notable after working together on 2009 romantic-comedy I Love You Phillip Morris, and now after two years, they reunite and go back to their traditional theme choice to craft a film with new meanings and kinds of characters. Once again, they deliver spectacularly, but even more than they did before and perhaps gain a few Oscar nominations in the near future for their work. After spending the majority of his career as a co-writer, especially in Disney films such as Cars, Bolt and Tangled, Dan Fogelman goes on to write a new film alone and succeeds admirably. It truly could have been an incredibly corny script due to the large number of characters and certain events, but Fogelman sticks to the originality of the genre by telling separate stories from each character and merging them towards the end and putting a grin on its viewer’s faces. Fogelman deserves to be a strong contender for Best Original Screenplay at the 84th Academy Awards coming up and the film should garner Best Musical/Comedy at the Golden Globes too.


Overall, Crazy Stupid Love is an outstanding romantic comedy-drama that is remarkably one of the best films of 2011 and makes it’s mark as one of the most inspirational films that have come out in recent memory. After already expecting a lot from it, Crazy Stupid Love thankfully doesn’t fall into those dumb, plain, predictable and empty romantic-comedies, but turns out one that genuinely creative, heartfelt and quite unpredictable on a few occasions, which is what we have. So it has and does everything that you’d expect from it: it’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you cry and most of all - it’ll entertain you.