M-Net Sunday Night Movie Premiere review: Crazy, Stupid, Love

Crazy, Stupid, Love feels like small-scale indie movie that just happened to have landed an A-list cast and the backing of a major studio. It’s rare for such a big movie to feel as loose and rambling as this, but the sense of fun is infectious and audiences will more than likely find themselves swept along.

At any rate, the A-listers are clearly enjoying themselves. The impressive ensemble at the film’s centre consists of Steve Carell and Julianne Moore as Cal and Emily, a married couple whose relationship is on the rocks, Emma Stone as practical, career-focused Hannah and Ryan Gosling as Jacob, an über-suave pickup artist who inhabits a bar where Cal goes to drown his sorrows after his marriage crumbles.

The supporting cast seem to be having fun too, especially Jonah Bobo as a precocious love-struck teen and Liza Lapira as the Stone’s requisite sassy friend.

The lead players all seem eminently comfortable in their roles and generally find interesting ways to deepen their fairly rote characters, or take them in unusual new directions. Steve Carell continues to refine his put-upon everyman persona by adding various layers of prickliness and an unexpected flair for the pickup game, while Gosling, sporting a haircut that probably deserves a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, gets a chance to explore his frivolous side while somehow managing to avoid his character coming across as an obnoxious alpha-male.

While the female characters are given less space than their male counterparts, Moore and Stone nevertheless manage to make them both believable and interesting and there is a definite chemistry between both central couples. Moore and Carell paint an honest portrait of a loving couple who have lost their way and Stone and Gosling form one of the most delightful screen-couples seen for ages. Honestly, their pairing is so dynamic that the movie could have consisted of two-and-a-half hours of them hanging out in a bar and still been more entertaining than the majority of recent big-budget romcoms.

Which is not to say that the film doesn’t have its flaws, the most glaring of which is the fact that, after gleefully defying Hollywood conventions for most of its running time, the film hastily retreats for the safety of cliché for the ending. It’s a pity, because the characters really deserve a better, more honest ending than the one they are given and an attempt to do so may have seen the film secure its place as one of the best of 2011.

Also, there is a serious problem with the sexual politics of one of the supporting relationships and a grand gesture at the end that is supposed to come across as sweet ends up feeling highly inappropriate at best. A minor mistake in the greater scheme of things, but one that stands out as a rare case of bad judgment in an otherwise sure-footed production.

The verdict: Despite a couple of flaws, Crazy, Stupid, Love is written with genuine wit, performed with genuine heart and feels like a genuine breath of fresh air in a particularly stale genre. Recommended.

Crazy, Stupid, Love premieres on M-Net and M-Net HD on Sunday 9 August at 9:05pm WAT.