Friday, August 5, 2011

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

A middle aged suburbanite's wife tells him that she is having an affair and wants a divorce. Stupefied with the revelation, he spends his nights sulking in a local bar, telling his tale of woe to anyone who will listen. Tired of this routine and possibly out of pity, a suave younger man decides to teach him the ropes of womanizing, which only push things into a bigger tailspin. "Crazy, Stupid, Love." is an awkward movie that is poorly written and realized, often cringe inducing, and contains plot contrivances that make no sense are there strictly to sentimentalize the movie. Steve Carell is good at playing these sad sack roles, which he demonstrated in the far superior "Dan in Real Life", but there is hardly anything to work with here and his improvisations only go so far. The cast is filled with other great actors (Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Kevin Bacon, Marissa Tomei, Emma Stone), but the script doesn't do them justice at all. "Crazy, Sexy, Love." is a hard movie to watch, not only because of how embarrassing the writing is, but because of how good the people are trying to make sense of it.