Crazy. Stupid. Love.

I must say, I've seen a bunch of romantic comedies in my time, but not quite with as many dysfunctional characters as with "Crazy. Stupid. Love.". It has an interesting premise if only there were enough people in this you could feel sorry for. 

Cal (Steve Carell) and Emily (Julianne Moore) have the perfect life together living the American dream... until Emily asks for a divorce. Now Cal, Mr. Husband, has to navigate the single scene with a little help from a professional bachelor he met at a bar, Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling). Make that a lot of help. Let's face it, Cal's a mess and Cal's only association with dating was dating his wife when they were high school sweethearts. Also throw into the pot that Emily was having an affair with co-worker, David Lindhagen (Kevin Bacon), and Cal thinking innocently that their marriage is rock solid, and you have a perfect storm for one dysfunction after another. Is there still any hope for them or are they just another statistic?

Others to round out the cast are Emma Stone as Hannah, Analeigh Tipton as Jessica, Jonah Bobo as Robbie, Cal and Emily's son, John Carroll Lynch as Bernie and Beth Littleford as Claire, Jessica's parents, Marisa Tomei as Kate, one of Cal's dates, Liza Lapira as Liz, a co-worker of Hannah, Joey King as Molly, Cal and Emily's daughter, and Josh Groban as Richard.










This was adequately directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa and was interestingly written by Dan Fogelman ("Cars" '06, "Fred Claus" '07, "Bolt" '08, "Tangled" '10). There were a number of twists and turns to peak your interest in keeping going with this, but it really took too long to get to a point where it was actually keeping you in your seat. Once it got going, it was a nicely done comedy; it's just getting there was the work.

This has a great cast and with all their dysfunction, the moral of this story was to wait and try to make that marriage work, because the work of separating seems to be more work than just making 'it' work.

Out of 4 stars: 2.5                       Rated: PG-13                       118min.