*** (out of five) Crazy, Stupid, Love. Written by Dan Fogelman. Directed by Glenn Ficara & John Requa.
This is the place in the review where the movie critic, bludgeoned senseless by week after week of adolescent summer fare, gives thanks for “counter-programming”. In this case, it would be for Crazy, Stupid, Love, the witty, effortlessly entertaining rom-com Warner Bros. has wisely decided to slot between slabs of superhero beefcake. But the makers of Crazy deserve gratitude for a more practical reason. For how much action (as in that other kind of action) can anyone expect a Transformer or Harry Potter to inspire after that dinner-and-movie date? Geekdom can be cute, but that has its limits.
Crazy is firmly in the Love, Actually tradition of warm, somewhat-but-not-too-hokey ensemble comedy, with a similarly motley cast of veterans and newcomers. We get Steve Carell as the older guy whose inner manhood has disappeared into that place our passports usually end up—someplace safe but we can’t remember where. We get the familiar but still beautiful faces of Julianne Moore and Marisa Tomei, and also the relative freshness of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling (who’s actually been around a while, but still seems new). And then there’s Analeigh Tipton, a former “America’s Next Top Model” who’s so appealing as a 17 year-old in love with a much older man, with a face a virtual billboard of tender emotions, that she’s better described as America’s Next Top Ingenue.
The script by Dan Fogelman sets these figures around and against each other in curlicues of romantic frustration that are too complex and too frivolous to bother explaining, except that it’s full of coincidences and improbables that would bother a viewer who wasn’t so busy being entertained. (After all, Shakespeare had his share of romantic imponderables too.) Cal (Carell), you see, is blindsided by his wife’s (Moore) decision to divorce. Suddenly thrust into the dating stakes, he inspires the sympathy of Jacob (Gosling), a womanizing smoothie who volunteers to remake Cal in his image. But despite his exploits in the single scene, Jacob is existentially miserable too…until he meets Hannah (Stone), a law student who has a surprising connection back to Cal. Meanwhile Jessica (Tipton), the girl who babysits his son Robbie (Jonah Bobo), is deeply, hopelessly in crush with Cal, whilst Robbie secretly pines for her in return. Got that?
We appreciate the break from Transformers and vampires and Smurfs, but of course Crazy, Stupid, Love is as much a fantasy as anything made by Pixar. In the world of the rom-com, fellas who insist on the grand romantic gesture, who never give up on their ideal but reluctant soul-mates, get the girl in the end. Back here in Catharine MacKinnon’s America, they get a restraining order. And people who tramp around the yards of their ex-spouses’ houses, doing their landscaping and peeping in windows, are not heartbroken schmucks who deserve our sympathy, but stalkers. It’s as if Fogelman has imagined a parallel universe where the words “creepy” and “harassment” don’t exist.
One difference lies in how writer Fogelman frames his characters. In Crazy, all of them are unfulfilled, but they’re also subtly puzzled by their unhappiness. Like Data, the almost-human android from Star Trek: The Next Generation, they seem to struggle with their unwonted emotions in a way that never becomes negative or threatening. Abandoned by his wife, Cal comes off more wistfully self-pitying than angry; when the guys scuffle here over their lady-loves, as they inevitably must, it’s more like a harmless scrum seen on an elementary school playground than conflict between emotionally-distraught adult males.
Yes, it’s a romantic comedy. I did my share of laughing. But isn’t the real joke the idea that love is a laughing matter at all?
© 2011 Nicholas Nicastro
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