a sweet and misguided movie

Rating: 8/10 (27 January 2012)

Steve Carrell's funny. Ryan Gosling is funny. Julianne Moore and Emma Stone are funny.
Everyone's funny and sweet in this movie, and this is why it carries you away and makes you ignore some flaws and mishandling of social taboo.
I can't help but notice that the male characters evolve much more creatively than the female ones. Steve Carell's and Ryan Gosling's journeys are heartfelt, and the adolescent Jonah Bobo's would be also, but the fact that a 13 year old acts as the moral voice for the movie at the top of his simplistic and naive worldview is a detriment to the overall message.
At the end, Carell tries to find the answer, and the movie wants you to believe that Bobo and Carell learned their lessons, but they really quite didn't. The flaws that set the plot in motion and creates the whole distress they have to overcome are creatively dismissed at the end by the female characters, who welcome their female parts with open arms. Only Gosling's character manages to deeply transform.
Speaking of which, the female characters lack a story arc. They begin and end the movie the same way, as if they were just waiting for the male characters to do their thing and come back to their arms, no matter what shape the dudes end with. The females lose voice altogether as the plot unfolds. Although all of them start with vision, decision, passions and shortcomings, they freeze as if a picture was taken at the beginning and it was maintained for the rest of the story.
To put it in another reviewer's words, it is patronizing to women in general. The overly patriarchal stance envelops many of the character dynamics, even though I truly felt the male characters were specifically designed to break the stereotype and add layers of depth to the male figure of our society. It can't be said that the same depth was successful for the female ones, so the final moral lesson was left limping on one of its halves.
I still scored this a 7 because the sweetness and humour are incredibly strong and well knit. If you're conservative, you'll probably enjoy a 9 experience.