I had wanted to see this movie for a long time based on the trailer and the A-List cast - Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, and Emma Stone, just to name a few. The film ended up being funny but also surprisingly serious in parts; it could have been funnier, but it's definitely still worth seeing.
Cal (Steve Carell, TV's "The Office") is devastated when his wife Emily (Julianne Moore, "The Kids are All Right") tells him that she wants a divorce. He spends a few days moping around at a local bar, where he eventually meets Jacob (Ryan Gosling, "Blue Valentine"), a "ladies' man" who decides to give Cal a make-over. Cal met Emily when they were in high school, and they married at 17, so Cal has never been with other women before. Jacob's make-over gives Cal the confidence he needs to go back to the bar and meet new women.
At the same time, his son Robbie (Jonah Bobo, TV's "The Backyardigans") has a major crush on their babysitter, Jessica (Analeigh Tipton, "The Green Hornet"), even though he's 13 and she's 17. To complete the love circle (more like a parallelogram at this point!), Jessica has a huge crush on Cal, and can't understand why Emily (Moore) would divorce him. Meanwhile, Jacob has met Hanna (Emma Stone, "Easy A"), who is a "gamechanger," as he tells Cal, and may even make him abandon his bachelor/"player" lifestyle. As Cal tries to figure out what - and who - he wants in his life, he realizes that maybe he's still in love with his wife after all, and he decides to try to get her back.
This movie reminded me a lot of Love Actually, in that there are a ton of different "love stories" going on all at once, and that the characters are all connected in some way. My favorite couple was definitely Gosling and Stone, but Carell and Moore were cute together as well. Jonah Bobo steals the show as Carell's son Robbie, who is cute for his age, and all of the supporting actors do a nice job here too - Kevin Bacon ("X-Men: First Class") plays a coworker of Moore's whom she sleeps with once, and she tries to make it work with him after she decides to divorce Carell's character.
Yes, see this film. It's a little discombobulated at times, but there is a major twist at the end that neither the audience nor I saw coming, as far as I could tell, and from then on the movie rolls on to a satisfying conclusion. I wish that Gosling and Stone would have had a bit more screen time - the middle third of the movie mostly focuses on Carell and Moore's relationship, as well as Carell's new relationships with other women - but I can see why the filmmakers decided to set up the movie this way. Crazy, Stupid, Love may not be the most original rom-com in a while, but it definitely has many "laugh out loud" moments, and it will be sure to amuse and entertain audiences this summer.
Crazy, Stupid, Love is in theaters today, July 29th, and is rated PG-13.
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Liz Parker is a 2009 graduate of the University of Michigan. She currently works as an Assistant Medical Editor for a pathology website. Visit her at her movie blog Yes/No Films