Films: Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Reviewer: Wally
Director: Glenn Ficarra and John Requa
Released: 23rd September 2011
Rating: 12a
Popcorns: 4.5/5

A father's life unravels while he deals with a marital crisis and tries to manage his relationship with his children.

Crazy, Stupid, Love was my 250th film watched this year, so far.  I'm very pleased to say that it was a great film to hit that landmark with and I really do urge everyone to go and see this at the cinema.

The story is told through three different love stories, but mainly focuses on the unlikely relationship struck up between Cal and Jacob; played by Carell and Gosling, respectively.
Cal and his wife, Emily (Moore), are going through a divorce, due to her sleeping with another man from her work, David Lindhagan.  The break up hits Cal pretty hard, so he spends his days and nights in a bar, drowning his sorrows with vodka & cranberry, or some other watered down spirit.
This is until he meets Jacob, a womaniser and all round hunk, who vows to help Cal change his life around and eventually win back Emily from the arms of the evil Kevin Bacon.

As you can imagine, hilarity ensues, watching Cal awkwardly try to chat up women in the bar, whilst boring them with tales of his break up and his kid's lives.
Whilst this is going on, elsewhere in the film, Cal's son Robbie has fallen madly in love with his babysitter.  The babysitter has fallen madly in love with Cal and Jacob has fallen madly in love with a girl he met at the bar, called Hannah.  Hannah's played by Emma Stone, who we like very much and she will play a key part in the film later on...which I shall not spoil right here.

It's all a huge mix up and conflict of interests from all of the characters that really make this film something special and the insanely hilarious scene near the end will have even the most hardened movie goer laughing in the aisles.  Even the cringe worthy moments were done so well, that it wasn't too over the top.
Stone and Gosling and Carell and Moore both made for convincing couples, with Bacon and Marisa Tomei thrown in there to shake up the latter's relationship.

Every actor is great in this movie and the chemistry between the whole cast really made it look like they had fun on set.  The only exception I would make to this was Kevin Bacon.  It seemed a bit of a waste of a wage to put such a high profile actor in a bit part and he didn't really add much Bacon-ness to it.

Every man that sees this film will want to be Ryan Gosling and every woman will want to be with him.  I'm pretty sure most of the men will want to be with him too, as I've heard of many a man crush developing for this fine actor.  He's funny, handsome and charming and is the best thing about this film.

I've never seen anything by the directors, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa before, but they seem to be quite a capable duo.  I will most definitely be checking out 'I Love You Phillip Morris' after seeing this.

This is the kind of film I wouldn't have normally seen at the cinema, but it looks like it may well be the surprise comedy hit of the Summer (okay, it's nearly Autumn now).  Save money on Friends With Benefits and see this instead when it comes out on 23/09/11.