Crazy, Stupid, Love

This was better than I remembered. There's a lot of fabulous writing here, from the fun dialogue to the crafty plotting. It's a super fun idea. Where they fail is when they get excessively romanticized, like the ridiculous graduation speech, and other cheesinesses throughout. It's all over the top, and sometimes it works perfectly, while other times it feels very stupid. There's a decent amount of cringe, like The Office -- the trouble is when the cringe transcends the fictional world and you actually start cringing that the writers really went there. That's what happened at the end for me; I was no longer just cringing at Steve Carell -- I'm used to that -- I was cringing at the ridiculous writing. The ending was pretty disappointing, particularly the graduation thing. That alone docks at least a half star from the movie's rating. Most of the excessively romantic stuff was bearable though, and I was pretty impressed with the movie all around. There was a plot twist I really did not anticipate, even though I think I saw the movie around the time it came out? Unless I've just seen the first half multiple times?

Steve Carell is perfect. Julianne Moore is great for the role, though it's hard for me not to see her as the enemy the whole time. Between this, Still Alice, and Magnolia, she really plays this certain type of woman super well -- and that woman is not my type, so it's hard for me to root too much for her, but she plays it superbly. I don't mean "type" just in terms of attraction, but in terms of empathy. She's so put together that she's falling apart. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone do their jobs well, though Emma Stone's aura is confusing.