At Home: Crazy, Stupid, Love

I’m going to help you rediscover your manhood. Do you have any idea where you could have lost it?

Just in time for Valentine’s Day Crazy, Stupid, Love aims to sweep you on off your feet and whisper to you cloying messages about love, soul mates and, erm, masturbation.

It is a film that searches for love in every nook and cranny, not looking for answers but poking its head in, observing and then bounding off to the next storyline. It has at least four of them and it is with some difficulty that it manages to incorporate them into one satisfying whole.

It kicks off when Julianne Moore’s Emily asks husband Cal (Steve Carell) for a divorce during a romantic dinner. Storyline number two centres around Ryan Gosling’s womanising Jacob who sees a pitiful Cal drowning his sorrows at a bar and takes it upon himself to reinvigorate him. Storyline number three concerns Jacob and Emma Stone’s Hannah, who is told her romantic life is like a PG-13 film and is urged to find someone who’s a little dangerous. Storyline number four (wipes brow) revolves around Cal’s son Robbie (Jonah Bobo), a soppy kid who believes in soul mates and is infatuated with his babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton) who in turn has a crush on Cal.

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a good example of ‘busy filmmaking’, flooding its narrative with as many stars as possible and letting the charm, sincerity and cheese roll off the screen. It’s not to the level of Gary Marshall’s concoction of awful that was Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve but screenwriter Dan Fogelman hasn’t come up with an adequate solution of juggling the story’s multiple threads. Some characters provide comedic relief, others behave in an annoying manner and there’s the sensation that some are ciphers lacking substance.

That being said directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (I Love You Philip Morris) keep it light and cheerful with fun jokes and some touching moments, managing to draw a good deal of chemistry from their cast. Bursting at the seams, the script by Fogelman is an interesting look at love through the eyes of each generation. Cal and Emily’s relationship has lost its spark after seventeen years. Hannah and Jacob’s storyline is like alchemy, changing the very essence of their nature. Robbie and Jessica’s is about young love and infatuations that aren’t reciprocated. Surprises are in short supply but the actors generate a lot of goodwill in place of the script’s failings.

The lasting impression of Crazy, Stupid, Love is that it has too much on its plate. Kevin Bacon’s David Lindhagen, John Carroll Lynch’s Bernie and Marisa Tomei’s pedantic Kate are forgettable. I haven’t even started on the ending; one that’s artery clogging and provides the platform for a soppy speech that drags the ending on and on.

So while Crazy, Stupid, Love is bloated, it entertains; where the script trips over its surfeit of characters, the actors rescue it with their charm. Enjoyable fluff.

7/10

Trailer watch: The Amazing Spider-Man

Debuting to an underwhelming response (lots of “ums”, “mehs” and “no, not an origin story again!”), the first teaser of Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man gave a good indication of the story that we’ll see in full next year. From the online response, while some are excited from the comments I read some seemed to be debating whether another origin story was necessary.

I have to admit, while I thought the trailer was okay, what’s keeping me from embracing this reboot is the origin story. From what I can glean from the trailer there will be some different elements (Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy, Peter’s parents, mechanical web-shooters) but I’m still of the mind that if they were going to reboot it would have been something like Peter coming back into contact with the people he met at high school years later and getting to know them again. The approach they’ve taken with this film smells like an unsubtle cash-grab, an attempt to milk the young teen audience in the same manner as Twilight.

An origin with a slight twist: in Raimi’s Spider-Man the parents were never really mentioned. It made sense if you considered Raimi was taken a leaf out of the 60s comics which focused on Peter and Aunt May. The opening shots of the trailer indicate that there’s some kind of mystery surrounding their disappearance, it looks as if Webb is actually going to delve in Peter’s past especially

He’s a loner, heavy emphasis on loner. Maguire’s Parker was goofy, nebbish nerd; Garfield’s looks like your disaffected youth who has no friends, except…

…for Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy. I don’t doubt that he becomes more than friends with her. Things will get more complicated as he takes to the streets of New York as Spider-Man and considering her dad is George Stacy (Dennis Neary), a New York City police Captain.

It’s behind you…!

Garfield looks exceedingly dorky with his glasses and bouffant hair.

A lot’s been said about the nature of the special effects in this reboot (eschewing visual effects for practical ones) however I do recall the first Spider-Man doing the same thing as well with the CG being ramped up in the sequels.

This shot has me worried a little teensy-weensy bit, not because it looks bad but because it reminds me of the finale in the first Spider-Man with the Green Goblin. What are the odds the Gwen Stacy will be there and Spider-Man will have to rescue her?

First time we see the costume and it looks oh…kay. I think the biggest question about is how will Garfield maintain that bouffant hair of his when he puts the mask on?

Reminiscent of video game Mirror’s Edge, the last twenty seconds of so is a face paced, first person perspective of Spider-Man swinging through the city. I can’t honestly believe this is part of the film if they’ve made so much noise about if being practical (it looks as if it was made purely for the trailer). Nevertheless, why put it in the trailer?

Belated Review: Easy A brings the charm but isn’t quite A-grade entertainment

Soon after it was released in the US I read reviews heralding the birth of a star, an actress who hard the charm and acting chops to carry a film. A film the reviews said was great, fun and accessible. It is fun, it is accessible, Emma Stone is great and it should have been seen by everyone but it is not quite as revelatory as I imagined and that’s partly down to my own expectations.