Rewarding

Rating: 4/10 (3 August 2011)

Finally a rom-com for everyone. Additionally, midsummer comedy Crazy, Stupid Love is at times as much a drama as it is laugh generating. In fact, is as serious a deconstruction of modern love as it is a humorous exposition of how stupid and crazy it can be for teens through adults.
And rewarding and mystifying and . . . Well, you get the idea: this film sweetly shows the fortitude needed to play the game, right to the end.
Cal (Steve Carell) is being divorced by Emily (Julianne Moore) after 25 years of soul mating. Jacob (Ryan Gosling) helps him get over his despair by teaching him to be cool with women. But Cal's heart belongs to Emily to the end. That part of the action is easy to predict; it's the other characters that lend color and unity to the pursuit of love by every healthy girl and boy, man and women.
Son Robbie (Jonah Bobo) loves babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who loves Cal, whose wife has had an affair with David (Kevin Bacon), who loves Emily. Throw in a horny teacher Kate (Marisa Tomei), whom Cal loves ever so briefly, and you have a zoo of unfulfilled love that only an American farce can untangle at only the right time. And it does, with a light heart that teaches the virtue of pursuing your love relentlessly.
Crazy, Stupid Love does better in the earlier parts of the film as Cal tries out his new clothes and line; in the latter part it becomes serious about it homiletic goal.