JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Move your big fat head, Carell.

Crazy, Stupid Love is directed by Glen Ficarra and John Requa, who made I Love You, Philip Morris. It is charming entertainment, though it tries too hard to be quirky. Granted, if someone can make you believe that he would jump out of a (slowly) moving car in order to avoid hearing his wife’s confession of infidelity, that is Steve Carell (who also produced the movie). The guilty wife is played by Julianne Moore, who can do everything (including form her mouth into a perfect square while freaking out at the drugstore in Magnolia) but light and fluffy (We didn’t believe her in 30 Rock either). Even if we totally sympathize with her decision to have an affair with Kevin Bacon’s character, since this means she has a pulse, plus certain scenes in Wild Things are burned into our retinas. The problem with Kevin Bacon’s character is that not only is he played by Kevin Bacon, but he’s actually a good guy. That would cause a serious imbalance in the universe.

Ryan Gosling’s ears are too small and his shoulders are too narrow. Steve Carell’s nose is too big. That said, we would not reject either of them.

So poor cuckolded Cal (Steve Carell) leaves his wife and tries to get a social life, but he’s so inept that he elicits the pity of Jacob the world’s greatest pick-up artist. We do not doubt that Jacob can seduce a woman at fifty paces because we have eyes to see that he is Ryan Gosling. What we find suspect is the idea that Jacob, whose philosophy of life is based on that guy manual The Game, would adopt this pitiful middle-aged man in baggy clothes and tutor him in the ways of shopping, grooming, and getting the girl. But if we do not buy this concept there would be no movie. (We saw it with Scooter and Kermit whose logic kills movies. Kermit: “If the old man in The Da Vinci Code wanted their big secret to stay secret, he should’ve just died instead of making all those puzzles. Stupid.”)

Emma Stone is so terrific that the only time she fumbled in Easy A was when she referred to her “total lack of allure”. It is right that this woman be paired with Ryan Gosling.

Speaking of “stupid” you know what would’ve been perfect for this movie’s soundtrack? That Pinoy rap where they sample Barbra Streisand (“Love soft as an easy chair—”) and yell “Stupid!” after every line. Anyway Jacob turns Cal into a successful pick-up artist by making him buy clothes that fit properly (Listen to Jacob, guys in oversized shirts and baggy jeans, this is real wisdom), getting him the right haircut (Listen!) and teaching him the “right” lines and moves. These lines are so obviously phony that they don’t matter, it’s all in the delivery and the fact that the delivery boy is Ryan Gosling. The only human who does not fall for Jacob’s technique is Hannah (Emma Stone). That’s how we know that he will fall in love with her.

DYKSWP (Did you know she was Pinoy) alert: Liza Lapira plays Hannah’s best friend.

There are several plot strands, one involving Marisa Tomei who takes off with the movie, and as Crazy, Stupid Love moves past the second hour the filmmakers realize that they have to end it somehow. So the strands are tied together in the most contrived, unconvincing way possible, and we mean Star Cinema-type ending though less insulting to human intelligence. We still enjoyed the movie though.