Crazy, Stupid, Love

Crazy, Stupid, Love I watched this movie three times within a week, two of them during my flight back and forth from London to Athens. Shortly after it had ended for the third time, I realized that if a movie of this mixed genre, comedy-drama-romance still hasn’t bored me after watching it three times in a row, then I should definitely take a closer look at it.

The basic story is quite common, but the writer of the movie manages to use some of the all-time classic clichés in an interesting way. The cliché of the long lasting marriage: the middle-aged, married couple with three kids, played by Steve Carell and Julianne Moore, who lose track of happiness like so many others and end up splitting because of an affair. Only this time, the wife is the one that has the affair. In order to get over this tragedy, the husband finds his Pygmalion (another cliché) in Ryan Gosling - a young guy, extremely handsome and very sexy. In a few, short words, the perfect womanizer teaches Steve Carell how to find his lost manhood and transforms him into an attractive man who learns how to pick up women at bars. Among them is Marisa Tomei, his son’s school teacher. The film concludes with another predictable scene that I won’t reveal.

Everyone that participates in this movie plays his part brilliantly, from Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone to Jonah Bobo, Steve Carell’s youngest son. The characters are so real and vivid, just like the dialogue, which has a really clever sense of humour. Also, each story powerfully supports the main idea, and the film succeeds in coming across as a fully completed story.

Overall, for me anyway, this movie proves that you may use the same clichés like so many others have done before, but the result won’t necessarily be boring or uninteresting, provided you have a better way to do it. Sometimes all that you need is a twist, and this movie has it.