Review: "Crazy, Stupid, Love" (Mostly) Wastes Its Incredible Cast

This new ensemble romantic comedy has a fantastic cast — Julianne Moore! Emma Stone! Steve Carell! Ryan Gosling! — and a few pleasant scenes. But it's a slight, forgettable film.

Ryan Gosling

Steve Carell's "loser" movie persona — geeky, naive, but fundamentally decent — has finally gotten tired. Hey, he's played basically the same character now in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Dinner for Schmucks, Date Night, and many other films.

Sadly, Carell and his patented character are given the most screen time in the new ensemble movie Crazy, Stupid, Love, despite the fact that he's surrounded by actors — Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, even Julianne Moore finally doing comedy again — who I'd rather have seen much more of.

Carell plays Cal, a hapless, middle-aged man whose wife Emily (Moore) is in love with a fellow office worker and tells him she wants a divorce. Much like Larry Crowne in this summer's other "movie for adults," Larry Crowne, Cal is in desperate need of a make-over. Fortunately, while lamenting his plight at the local pick-up joint, a kindly Lothario named Jacob (Gosling) takes pity on him and teaches him how to dress better and talk more confidently so he can pick up women (like Marissa Tomei).

Meanwhile, one of the women Gosling hits on in the bar (Stone) is dealing with her own reluctant fiance, and Cal and Emily's 13-year-old son is pining after his 17-year-old baby sitter who has a penchant for taking nude pictures of herself.

Basically, the gimmick of the movie is that every character is crazy in love with someone who isn't in love with him or her — that's the point of the movie's wonderful title, Crazy, Stupid, Love (although what's with those commas, especially the second one? Is that grammatically correct?).

Frankly, with a cast this amazing, it's impossible that there wouldn't be something watchable in this movie. A long seduction scene between Stone and Gosling — one that involves, yes, a dance sequence from Dirty Dancing (!) — is easily the best part of the film: funny, real, and charming (and it's yet another reminder that Stone is destined to become a major movie star).

Likewise, although it's been done a million times before, Jacob's gentle coaching of Cal, helping him to find the manhood he lost ("Do you remember when you last had it?"), is pleasant enough.

And let it be noted that Ryan Gosling is not only frequently shirtless throughout the film, he's clearly been working out.

That said, the film meanders badly, and huge swaths of it simply don't work at all. Moore's character makes no sense and isn't given anything to do anyway. The entire sub-plot with the son has the character acting (a) inconsistently, and (b) in a way that no teenage boy ever would. Really? He gets caught masturbating and is initially embarrassed, but then wants to talk about it with everyone, even including in his middle school graduation speech? And speaking of that graduation speech, which is part of the movie's resolution, the entire sequence is a complete, groan-inducing movie cliche.

Frankly, I'm surprised that a script this sloppy attracted such an amazing cast.

But the movie is what it is. It's probably not the worst film you'll see this summer, but it's slight and will absolutely be forgotten in two years.

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