Crazy Stupid Love vs Date Night

Crazy Stupid Love would make a fantastic TV show. It’s a smart, funny, multi-generational romantic comedy, full of great performances, witty dialogue, and unusual, unlikely connections for its large cast. Unfortunately, a few of those qualities hinder its ability to be a truly great movie.

Steve Carrell and Julianne Moore are Cal and Emily, who have been married for years and have kids. They’re out for a date night, and while deciding on dessert, Emily decides on a divorce. Cal is so in shock he tumbles out of the car on the way home. Emily had sex with a coworker (Kevin Bacon), but mainly she’s just unsatisfied with her life and is using the divorce as a method of self-discovery. In short order, the kids have been told, Cal has moved out, and he’s made himself a regular at a local bar. It looks like a nicer hotel lounge, or maybe a boring, expensive club. It’s all chaise lounges and colorful cocktails. It’s one of those places that makes a lonely person feel good for going out, but it’s not so aggressive that they’re intimidated into staying home. At the bar, Cal meets two important additions to his life, played by two of my favorite actors.

The first is Jacob (Ryan Gosling), a suave ladykiller with a wardrobe that qualifies him as an honorary cast member of Inception. Jacob takes an interest in Cal. They seem like unlikely friends at first, but it’s pretty clear that Jacob sees Cal not just as a good guy, but as a cautionary tale. If someone like Jacob ever doubts the legitimacy of his shallow lifestyle, he need only meet someone like Cal, who traveled the traditional road and ended up alone anyway. As Jacob and Cal become friends, Jacob doles out tough love about Cal’s predicament, and gives him a full makeover. With an expensive haircut and a few of Jacob’s smooth pickup lines, Cal gets the courage to approach new women (he’s only slept with Emily), including one played by Marisa Tomei. Aside from possibly Danny DeVito (possibly, it’s a close one), there is no more welcome presence to me in movies than Marisa Tomei. She plays Kate, a teacher, who appreciates Cal’s pathetic honesty (He tries an overly-forward version of Jacob’s lines, then just settles on the truth about his sadness), and gives him a codependent roll in the hay as payment. Tomei brings a broader comedy to the movie, which borders on touchy-feely, and zings it up some with a bawdier, sexier tone. Emily’s affair is off-camera, as are most of Jacob’s conquests, so it needs as much Tomei heat as it can get, especially in light of the two different subplots involving kids.

Crazy Stupid Love aims for a universal story of how love drives us all to drastic behavior, and how it hits us at unexpected times. Fine. But, to illustrate this point, it features two subplots, given a big chunk of screen-time, with the film’s younger cast. All the child actors are good, but both storylines (a kid with a crush on a babysitter, a babysitter with a crush on a dad) are glaringly out of place in what is otherwise an adult comedy. It’s all cutesy, first-crushy, and it deviates from the central plot just as yet another wrench has been thrown in as conflict to the adults. She’s played by Emma Stone. Listen, Hollywood. Moviemakers. I’m saying this to you: If you have Emma Stone in your movie, do as little as possible to distract us from her.

Emma Stone is Hannah, Jacob’s most recent pursuit. She’s smart, funny, beautiful, and self-aware enough to see herself as more than the opportunity for one of Jacob’s one-night conquest. He’s persistent, though, and eventually they have a cautious, flirtatious, chatty date, followed by one of those movie relationships that plays off as much like a sexy friendship as much as anything romantic. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone have every kind of chemistry necessary to sustain a movie—comedic, sexual. I’m sure there’s a third kind, but they don’t need it—which means their third of Crazy Sexy Love is frustratingly brief. If it only focused on the two couples, then not only would Crazy Sexy Love have time for its gifted cast, but the fragile plot coincidences holding them together might not seem so sprung out of nowhere.

Crazy Stupid Love coasts along, buoyed by that killer cast and its sporadically inspired script, but sets up twists that require the cast to know things the audience doesn’t. Sure, it’s a surprise when we learn how Hanna connects to Cal, or Emily to Kate, but it’s at the cost of character development and the overall integrity of the story. For example, Cal and Jacob lose touch for a long period of time, with no explanation other than the script wouldn’t be able to spring one of its shocks later if they had spoken.

Crazy Stupid Love was written by Dan Fogelman, who mainly writes animated kids’ movies. So maybe that’s the reason for the kids’ subplots? Does he think kids might want to see Julianne Moore and Steve Carrell wrestle with marital problems? It was directed by Glenn Ficarra, who also directed the much-praised I Love You Phillip Morris, which I also nitpicked to death. Sorry, Glenn. I liked this one, honest. Third time’s the charm, I just know it.

But seriously, he gives the kid with the crush the final moment in the movie. It fades out on his close-up and everything, like he was the main character. Weird.

Date Night is another Steve Carrell comedy directed by a kids’ movie veteran (Shawn Levy, of Cheaper By The Dozen and Night At The Museum). It’s not as rich emotionally as Crazy Stupid Love, but it’s not as muddled or dependent upon plot tricks to tell the story.

It’s basically Adventures In Babysitting for adults. Carrell and Tina Fey are Phil and Claire Foster. They have little kids we barely have to see, a babysitter we aren’t forced to care about, and a night to themselves. Their reservations fall through, so they take someone else’s. The reservation belongs to a couple on the wrong side of the law, and by just maintaining the lie a couple minutes too long, Phil and Claire on dodging bullets and running off into the city, trying to clear their fake names and save their real lives. Like Crazy Stupid Love, Date Night has an impressive supporting cast, all on hand to either legitimize the fear and stress the Fosters are experiences (William Fichtner, Common), or to spotlight the outlandishness of the the story they’ll have to tell later (James Franco, J.B. Smoove). Carrell and Fey are game and funny (she has my favorite line in the movie, one I’m positive is an adlib, and one I’ve used on several occasions. Don’t worry, Tina Fey, I always give you credit).  Date Night is goofy, quite funny, and although full of twists and turns for the Fosters, clear and honest in its storytelling. The central couples of Crazy Stupid Love are sent out on their own, on emotional adventures, to realize how good they have it at home. Date Night has a more literal approach, but with a similar outcome I found more satisfying. Date Night has as many coincidences and hurdles for its characters as Crazy Stupid Love, but they aren’t there just to trick the audience. Dick the characters around all you want; just leave me out of it.

Crazy Stupid Love: B-

Date Night: B