“Crazy, Stupid, Love.” opens on a marriage that is already over. Emily Weaver, played by Julianne Moore, tells her husband Cal she has been unfaithful and wants a divorce. Cal, played by Steve Carell, jumps out of their moving car rather than hear it.
That is the joke and the wound at the same time. Glenn Ficarra and John Requa directed the 2011 film from a Dan Fogelman script. It runs 118 minutes and carries a tagline that doubles as a diagnosis: “This is crazy. This is stupid. This is love.”
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
Cal Weaver Moves Into an Empty Apartment
The film’s first act is its sharpest. Cal is over 40, suddenly single, and adrift in the fickle world of dating. He has a good job, a beautiful house, great children and a beautiful wife. Then he has none of it.
He moves into his own apartment and starts frequenting an upscale bar, where he talks loudly about his wife cheating and his divorce. This is where “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” finds its engine.
Ryan Gosling plays Jacob Palmer, a self-styled player who beds different women and was recently rejected by a law school graduate named Hannah, played by Emma Stone. Jacob takes pity on Cal and offers to teach him how to pick up women.
Jacob Palmer Teaches a Middle-Aged Man
The training sequence is the film’s most quoted stretch, and it earns the attention. After a few awkward attempts to talk to women, Cal seduces a woman named Kate at the bar, played by Marisa Tomei. The confidence carries. He emulates Jacob’s example successfully and starts seducing other women.
Gosling is the movie’s best special effect. He plays Jacob as a man who has mistaken volume for charm, and the performance never winks at the audience.
Carell does the harder job. Cal is not a sad sack and not a hero. He is a man learning a skill he should never have needed.
Robbie Weaver and Jessica Riley
The film’s second thread belongs to Cal’s 13-year-old son Robbie, played by Jonah Bobo, who makes numerous grand gestures to win the heart of his babysitter Jessica, played by Lio Tipton. Jessica is Bernie’s daughter. Bernie, Cal’s best friend, is played by John Carroll Lynch.
The divorce ends Cal’s friendship with Bernie. Bernie’s wife sides with Emily over Cal.
Robbie’s pursuit is the film’s weakest strand. Jessica eventually dissuades him after revealing she likes someone older, without revealing it is Cal. On the advice of a promiscuous classmate, she takes nude photos of herself, intending to give them to him. The subplot sits uneasily beside the adult comedy.
The Parent-Teacher Conference Collapses
Everything detonates at Robbie’s parent-teacher conference. Cal and Emily reunite there, and she is impressed by his newfound confidence and fitted clothes. Their reunion goes well until they meet Robbie’s teacher, who turns out to be Kate.
Kate spitefully reveals her and Cal’s tryst because he never called her afterwards. In the ensuing argument, Cal inadvertently confesses to having sex with nine women since their separation. Emily leaves in disgust that Cal did this as payback for her cheating while also openly dating David Lindhagen, played by Kevin Bacon.
The scene is the film’s best argument for itself. It is a farce built out of real humiliation, and it lands because every character in the room is right about something.
The cast also includes Beth Littleford as Claire, Liza Lapira as Liz, and Joey King as Molly.
Awards and Reception
Warner Bros. Pictures released the film in the United States on July 29, 2011. It grossed over $145 million worldwide against a $50 million budget.
It was nominated for Best Comedy at the 17th Critics’ Choice Awards. Gosling was nominated for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy at the 69th Golden Globe Awards.
Here is how the film’s key elements rank against each other:
- Gosling’s Jacob, the film’s cleanest comic creation
- The parent-teacher conference, its best-constructed scene
- Carell’s Cal, a performance doing quiet work
- The Robbie and Jessica subplot, the film’s weakest thread
The release timeline:
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| July 29, 2011 | U.S. theatrical release by Warner Bros. Pictures |
| 17th Critics’ Choice Awards | Nominated for Best Comedy |
| 69th Golden Globe Awards | Gosling nominated for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy |
What the Film Gets Right
“Crazy, Stupid, Love.” is a romantic comedy that understands its title is a thesis, not a slogan. The interconnected love stories are held together by the premise that nobody in this film knows what they are doing.
The Robbie material is where that premise strains. A 13-year-old’s grand gestures and a babysitter’s nude photos are not the same kind of crazy as Cal’s bar education. The film treats them as though they were.
Gosling and Carell are the reason to watch. Their scenes together have a rhythm the rest of the film only occasionally matches.
The script by Fogelman is generous to its women in a way the genre usually is not. Emily is not a villain. Hannah is not a prize. Kate is not a punchline, even when the film asks her to be one.
That generosity is the difference between a film that uses infidelity as a plot device and one that treats it as a fact about people.
The film’s final act works because it refuses to let Cal off the hook. He confesses to nine women not as a boast but as an accident, and the accident is the point. He has been performing a version of himself he did not build.
“Crazy, Stupid, Love.” does not fully solve its own tonal problem. The Robbie subplot drags the middle, and the film’s insistence on tying every thread into one room at the end is tidier than the mess it spent two hours building.
What remains is a comedy with two genuinely great performances, one great scene, and a title that tells you exactly what you are getting. It is crazy. It is stupid. It is love.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
