Crazy, Stupid, Love.

I have lamented the dearth of good romantic comedies for a long time now, with nearly every single recent picture in the genre turning into a woman-hating ordeal packed with clichés and joyless interaction. Enter Crazy, Stupid, Love. Finally, an exception to what is sadly becoming a rule.

From the outset, this movie provides characters that are human and a plot that we care about. It has surprises, sweet moments and loads of laughs. It embraces its clichés, even calling its shots when the rain starts to pour or when the love scene ventures into PG-13 territory. Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, Crazy, Stupid, Love. moves easily and contains plenty of complications along the way.

The film opens with Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) and his wife Emily (Julianne Moore) in crisis. She has cheated on him and wants a divorce. Cal, upset that his life is crumbling, begins to frequent a bar and meets an attractive young lounge lizard type named Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling). Jacob takes Cal under his wing and wants to teach him how to be an ideal man; his reasoning is mysterious for the moment.

Cal begins to take the advice of Jacob and actually beds down a woman (Marisa Tomei) in his own awkward way. As Cal and Jacob become friends, complications begin to arise when it’s clear that he still has feelings for Emily. Jacob, meanwhile, gets into a romantic pickle of his own when he begins to fall for Hannah (Emma Stone). And Cal and Emily’s son Robbie (Jonah Bobo) has his own issues to work through with his hot babysitter (Analeigh Tipton).

Where Crazy, Stupid, Love. really excels is in weaving the stories together. As the movie veers into its final act, it is ultimately chaotic and yet it makes perfect sense. It features elements of classic farces, perhaps comic misadventures starring Cary Grant, but still feels entirely fresh. It earns is cheesiness, too, by giving us rich, layered characters that come around to revelations in surprising, heartwarming ways.

The casting could not be more perfect. Carell is very quickly becoming one of my favourite modern comic actors. He picks the right roles and knows how to time his performances perfectly, offering a crucial layer of amiability to go with all the stumbling about. And there’s Gosling, who I term as one of today’s best actors, playing a role that should be a stretch but doesn’t ever feel like one.

Crazy, Stupid, Love. is sophisticated in the way it clarifies its preposterous essentials. It starts on one path and brusquely turns on to another, expressing the crazy and the stupid concepts of love before resolving on an ending that, while foreseeable, is really the only ending this movie deserves. Along the way, the characters go through love’s voluminous paces and discover that a truly tender relationship is as stimulating and transformative as it is “happy.”

This film is hilarious and brimming with energy. It is passionate and full of life. It doesn’t rely on raunchiness. It is fashionable and clever without being ostentatious. It is thoughtful, too, and that may be the biggest surprise of all. In a day and age when most comedy is jumbled with abusiveness, Crazy, Stupid, Love. provides something that doesn’t require that the characters be demeaned or crassly disparaged. And that, it would seem, can go an awful long way.