4
It's rare these days for a film to make me feel something in the process of entertaining me, but that's just what Crazy Stupid Love does. I went in thinking this was going to be a raunchy comedy, but it turns out to be a sweet, much deeper film about love and what it does to us as human beings.
It starts off when Steve Carrell's Cal learns his wife has been cheating on him. He ends up at a bar, where he's taken under the wing of Ryan Gosling's Jacob, who makes it his job to turn Cal into a ladies man. But the film doesn't just follow this story in linear fashion. It goes off on tangents, focusing on different characters and how love makes them do things both crazy and stupid, but in this film, never less than honest and real, until all of them come together in the end.
Dan Fogelman's script is surprising, never falling into any rom. copatterns and allowing the characters to breathe. The actors take full advantage, and the cast is excellent all around, from Carrell and Gosling to Emma Stone and Julianne Moore. In a summer of horrible, forgettable romantic comedies, it's a movie that dates of both sexes can enjoy.