Crazy, Stupid, Love; a simple story ruined

Rating: Null/10 (26 September 2011)

I've come to the conclusion that Hollywood is incapable of producing a fully engrossing, delightfully simple "romantic comedy." "Crazy, Stupid, Love" makes the unfortunate mistake of presenting three touchingly believable stories along with three completely superfluous, "wacky" bad sit-com ones.Steve Carrell plays "Cal," the emasculated, depressed husband of his restlessly bored wife "Emily," played by the amazing Julianne Moore "Emily" who admits she has been cheating on "Cal" within the first few minutes of the movie and the couple spend the next 118 minutes trying to get back together. There are several genuinely charming, unaffected moments that allow us to see the chemistry Cal & Emily once had as a happily married couple.Ryan Gosling tries his superb, chameleon-like acting chops out on romantic comedy deeply involved in two of the three believable relationship with convincing ease. With a chiseled body, perfectly coiffed hair, million-dollar wardrobe and extraordinary good looks, Gosling "Jake" falls easily into the role of a disarmingly handsome, irresistibly charming cad. His confident playfulness reassures us that "Jake" is no mere shallow misogynist, he's simply a guy doing what he apparently does best. With a great deal of the action set in a chic cosmopolitan "glass-and-chrome" bar, Gosling, as the king of this castle, has yet to meet the woman who can say "no" to Jake's ultra-smooth "closing" line of "Wanna get outta here?" Witnessing Cal's self- pitying ineptitude, Jake decides to take him under his wing. Surrendering his credit card, Cal puts himself in Jake's hands for a confidence-building make-over. Gosling and Carrell's ensuing friendship is genuinely endearing as Cal progresses as Jake's protégé. The unthinkable happens when Jake becomes instantly smitten by the one woman who refuses his offer for casual sex. But to Jake's surprise and delight the same woman, "Hannah," played by the incandescent Emma Stone returns several days later, plants a big drunken kiss on Jake and insists that he take her home. In one of the movie's most charming scenes, Hannah giggles her way through Jake's mask of perfection, followed by both of them laughing at his admittedly canned and rehearsed seduction lines, with Jake finally admitting "What can I say? They work." Hannah and Jake don't have sex their first night together, allowing Jake the opportunity to begin to open up about himself for the first time, marking the beginning of their light and breezy, ever-deepening courtship. The problem with "Crazy, Stupid, Love," is that the writer Dan Fogelman and director Glenn Ficara didn't feel that these three stories in the hands of these four exceptional actors were sufficient to hold our attention. For some inexplicable reason, they felt the need to throw in Maris Tomei as the sex-starved schoolmarm "Kate," with whom Cal has his first successful one-night stand. She, of course, becomes the "one-night stand from hell," and "OMG!," turns out to be Cal's son's English teacher. In a disturbingly poorly written and poorly acted role, Ms.Tomei is so needlessly "over- the-top" as Cal's sex-partner turned "woman scorned" that she threatens to single- handedly destroys the credibility of the entire movie. Not quite finished, Mr. Fogelman and Mr. Ficarra felt the need to introduce John Carroll Lynch as the Cal & Emily's "wacky neighbor," who appears for the sole purpose of engaging Cal in a cringe-worthy backyard brawl. The fight is so absurdly contrived because the audience is well aware that Cal is the innocent victim, rather than the perpetrator of his neighbor's wrath. But worst of all, it wasn't funny. And as the coup de gras, they felt the need to throw Kevin Bacon into the mix as Emily's new boyfriend ("David Lindhagen.") His presence is so insignificant, that Ficarra and Fogelman must have been under laboring under the misconception that Mr. Bacon needed to add Carrell, Moore, Gosling and Stone to his famous "six degrees." The simple advice I would give to the movie makers of "Crazy, Stupid, Love" is "less is more." What could have been a delightful rom-com ends up as a convoluted mess. By editing out these pointless cliché-ridden characters, the four principals might have given us the streamlined, surprise hit of the summer, rather than yet another tepid, half-baked attempt at romantic comedy. Please refer to "Larry Crowne," "Friends With Benefits" and "No Strings Attached."