Rom-com with a few surprises

Rating: Null/10 (1 October 2011)

As the movie opens Cal Weaver's humdrum but comfortable life as an accountant in Beverly Hills is rudely shattered by his wife Emily (Julianne Moore announcing in a crowded restaurant that she's being having an affair with a workmate and wants a divorce after 25 years marriage. Cal (Steve Carell) moves out and drops in to the single bars scene where for reasons not entirely clear ("you remind me of someone") lounge room Lothario Jacob (Ryan Gosling) who beds a different gorgeous woman each night takes Cal in hand and trains him to be just as successful. Meanwhile Cal's 13 old son Robby (Johna Bobo) has fallen in love with the family's babysitter, High School student Jessica (Analeigh Tipton) who in turn has a crush on Cal. Then Jacob actually falls in love, with young lawyer Hanna (Emma Stone) and Emily starts to yearn for her discarded husband.
This all sounds like a conventional romantic comedy of the feel-good variety, but directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa and writer Dan Fogelman have a few surprises up their sleeves. The performances are first-rate and the dialogue crackling. There is some reliance on slapstick but also some real emotion conveyed. Ryan Gosling's Jacob might perhaps be too shallow to be true ("you look like you've been photoshopped" says Emily, on seeing his torso), but it turns out that even he has a credible backstory. As the principal lovers, Steve Carell and Julianne Moore exhibit a realism seldom seen in romantic comedy and there is some fine comic work from Maresa Tomei as one of Cal's lounge bar conquests who pops up a bit closer to home. At 120 minutes the film is slow in places – I would describe the direction as quirky rather than slick (how else can one explain the cinematographer's penchant for shoe-level shots) but more rewarding than the average rom-com, and although the ending is contrived it's still satisfying.
The directors, whose best known previous works, "Bad Santa" and "I Love You Phillip Morris" were decidedly quirky, have toned things down a bit here, but the characters are credible and sympathetic. I also liked the way the deep seated prudery and overdeveloped sense of decorum that afflicts middle class Americans are sent up. After an unseemly though perfectly understandable brawl in the Weaver's picture perfect back yard it falls to Vietnamese-American Officer Huang to tell the warring parties to do their fighting inside where the neighbours can't hear. I also liked Cal's line as he is rejected again by Emily outside Robbies' high school after a disastrous parent teacher interview and it starts to rain: "This is such a cliché". Well I suppose anyone going to see a rom-com ought to be prepared for clichés, but here they are cleverly handled, if a little sugar-coated.