Crazy, Stupid, Love.

"Crazy, Lost Love" is a comedy that definitely doesn't seem like the biggest hit after the first scene. Cal, played by the great Steve Carell, learns out of the blue during dinner that his wife wants to divorce him. Because of that, he later jumps out of the car. That's when it gets funny again. But the film gets even more complicated. Cal's 13-year-old son is in love with the girl who babysits him (17 years old), and she is in love with Cal. Love truly takes on different forms. Not to mention that Cal becomes a ladies man who gets nine women into bed over a few nights. He is helped by the professional seducer Jacob, played by Ryan Gosling, a person who puts everything into every role. But even the seducer must sometimes fall in love and want to settle down. The film deals with a fairly tangled mess of relationships, but eventually unravels itself. I won't reveal anything, but the film works excellently on all levels - it is great as a comedy, as a drama, and as a romantic film. Some jokes are strong, and some scenes have the potential to become cult favorites. The film is dominated by the brilliantly chosen actors, whether in the roles of the two mentioned men, or in the role of Julianne Moore. The young actors playing the thirteen-year-old son and the babysitting girl don't let themselves be outshined. Thanks to them, the film works well. You will laugh, you will get emotional. This definitely couldn't make me "LOL". More: http://www.filmovy-denik.cz/2012/08/parmeni-krysy-z-temnot-mi-4-blazniva.html (02/26/2013)

Not your standard romantic comedy. The humor was more subtle, the story was more fleshed out (I even thought it would hold up until the finale for a while), the dad was played by a very convincing Steve Carell, and even the corny plot with a life/relationship coach sort of worked for me. At first, the only thing that slightly spoiled my overall good impression was the lovestruck teen. I was going to give it a four, but it turned out I was too much of an optimist. Although the filmmakers had been resisting it, the film eventually slipped into the standard clichés and melodramatic speeches in the end. I did manage to see the bigger picture so I’m giving it three stars as I surprisingly had a good time most of the time. / Lesson learned: You aren’t exactly a great athlete? There's always miniature golf. Or chess. 3*- (09/20/2022)

A pleasant film that changes absolutely beautifully over time. I was quite impressed by how many interesting and big names they managed to rope into this movie. Maybe they wanted to shoot it for fun, because I doubt that they could get that much money out of such relationship-centric romantic movie. Anyway, the most amazing thing in the movie was Ryan Gosling. He was changing right before my eyes. First he was a flute player who scored with every girl he looked at, and then he was a boy who fell head over heels in love. And I believed him all that one hundred percent. Without him, the film would’ve definitely been only a half of what it is. But not only without him; Steve Carell is great as well. I just don’t understand why he’s being referred to as a comedian. He hasn’t grabbed my attention as a comedian yet, but he did convince me that he is a good actor. The film itself is about relationships with those we love and also about the fact that sometimes these relationships go into a slightly different direction than we would actually like. It was definitely a nice movie, but watching it once was enough for me. (12/29/2012)

Such a stellar constellation, and such a shallow result. What does it matter that actors like Carell, Moore, Emma Stone or the new hearthrob Ryan Gosling shine in front of the camera, when they are part of a script so naive and shallow that it was impossible to ignore. The three romantic storylines fit together beautifully and the first face-to-face meeting of all the characters raises the film to a slightly higher level, but with the exception of Gosling's affair, the stories are not very interesting, in some respects they’re downright far-fetched (I would have shot that little boy), and also blindly predictable until the final reconciliatory happy ending. I don't want to criticize too much, because this comedy certainly doesn't deserve it, but as much as I was looking forward to and expecting an American version of Love Actually, in the end I had to put up with just another routine movie that was neither very funny nor original. 70% (03/14/2013)

I wonder why Steve Carell took on another almost identical role after the great Dan in Real Life? Why didn't the film end with a great confrontation in the garden and have to have that awful ending? Why did Ryan Gosling get on my nerves so much? Okay, I'll answer the last question myself right now, since I'm heterosexual, but the first two remain a mystery. Still, Crazy, Stupid, Love isn't a bad spectacle. It's just worse than the aforementioned film four years before. (01/03/2015)