Take a couple that has been married for twenty five years. Add a dash of midlife crisis until it yields infidelity and divorce. Slather the wife with remorse for the disintegration of the marriage and her choice to sleep with David Lindhagen. Provide a young, philandering mentor to the aging, seemingly asexual protégé ex-husband. At first glance, this could be a recipe for disaster. Perhaps it could be the treatment for a film that finds pleasure in castigating the wife for her transgressions and praises the cuckold for his restraint. It could also be the formula for a movie that delights in showcasing a middle-aged man finding himself by evolving – or devolving – into a modern day Casanova. And, Crazy Stupid Love might have been one of these two things – or a blend of both – had it not been for the cast.
Instead, Crazy Stupid Love assigns no blame for the collapse of Cal (Steve Carell) and Emily’s (Julianne Moore) marriage. Rather, the issues within their milestone “twenty five year” marriage surface within the first three minutes of the film, and it becomes apparent that they are both culpable. As the trailer gives away, the couple sits over dinner, unable to decide “what [they] want.” Agreeing to announce their decision on the count of three, Cal goes a la carte with the “crème brulee” while Emily modifies her order and tasks the kitchen to prepare “a divorce.”
From there, we are whisked to the car, where Emily drives while confessing to sleeping with someone else and declaring “we were so young” when we got married. But, from this, she gets no rise out of Cal, who sits comatose in the passenger seat, quietly asking her to “stop talking” before he “get out of the car.” As Emily prattles, Cal stays true to his word and rolls out of the moving vehicle, but unlike the preview, this scene isn’t very funny. And, it’s not supposed to be. There is no music playing over Cal’s escape, just the sounds of a body thumping on pavement, Emily’s voice rationalizing her decisions, and the screeching of tires as she slams on her breaks to help her soon-to-be-ex-husband from his heap.
Here, we see that it was necessary for Emily to announce both her transgressions and a desire for divorce because Cal is unable to communicate, preferring the route of avoidance. Here,Crazy Stupid Love absolves Emily of blame and places it on the shoulders of both characters. In the realm of “break-up, rejuvenation comedies,” (Old School, Swingers) this is refreshing territory in that we are not forced to root for either character. Rather, Crazy Stupid Love illustrates the demise of a marriage – be it from time together, changing desires, etc. – but places it under a lens through which both characters are flawed.
What’s additionally refreshing is that the subsequent arcs of both characters don’t devolve to slapstick sexual humor where they both rampantly sew their oats, only to find that they were only truly happy in the past. Granted, there is sex, and there are sex jokes – mostly involving Cal – but the film never goes far in Emily or Cal’s liberation without allowing the melancholy of divorce to crest. Divorce is not just “something that happens,” and it – most often – can’t be tersely written off. This happens in a number of films where the scorned party is so angry at their ex because of his or her infidelity that their rage washes away any residual sentiment, but not in this one.
When Jacob (Ryan Gosling), the philandering, equal-opportunity flatterer, takes Cal under his wing, showing him how to dress and how to approach women, there are a number of awkward, uncomfortable, embarrassing moments, mostly centered around Cal’s conversational digression to his children, his “crappy apartment,” his wife, and her lover – did I mention he was a “cuckold”? — all of which keep him as isolated as he was in wedded bliss. It’s simultaneously comical and heart-rending, and Carell makes this possible with a smile that begins as sincere but soon becomes a mask for his well of emotions. The same can be said for Moore, who plays Emily as a woman whose eyes bespeak the love she has for Cal, but whose smile is worn as a perpetual mask, something that is most evident during a particularly touching scene in which she needs to relight the pilot in the hot-water heater.
Something else that keeps this story afloat – and offers a bit of hope for relationships, as opposed to decrying them all – is the subplots: Jacob, whose philandering is foiled when he falls for Hanna (Emma Stone), a young woman who has mistaken niceness for love; the tryst between Kate (Marisa Tomei), a recovered alcoholic who’s turned on by honesty and Cal, who is often too honest; and, Robbie (Jonah Bobo), Cal’s son who’s in love with Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), his babysitter who is in love with an older man and has a penchant for photography.
Often, subplots are a way to make movies longer and pack in more celebrities, but here, the subplots do a fine job framing the main characters by showing various generations of cupidity, infatuation, sex, and love.
The one downside to the film is the last twenty minutes, and while it doesn’t quash the accomplishments of the first hour and a half, the final act becomes less a poignant, intelligently written film and more a devolution into a cesspool of clichéd twists, conflicts, and misunderstandings. A few are relevant – like the penultimate meeting between Jacob and Cal – but the others are silly, nonsensical uber-coincidences that even a liberal interpretation of deus ex machina would be a stretch to apply to them. Perhaps these twenty minutes were the writer’s and directors’ way to show that caprice and silliness still exist amidst the wreckage of crumbled live, and because of what Crazy Stupid Love achieved in the beginning, I’ll absolve it from blame and place part of the culpability on my elevated expectations.
