Crazy Stupid Love

Crazy Stupid Love is a film directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. It's about love that has gone awry. It's about how parents' broken relationship can affect their children. It's about secret love. It's about the mid-life crisis. It's about a new start. It's about love.

Of course, I don't mean to cast a net to sweep every aspect of life under its carpet, but the film does tell you a lot about this crazy stupid thing called love. Cal Weaver, a middle-aged man, is an estranged husband, whose wife, Emily (wonderfully stars Julianne Moore), takes a decision to leave him possibly due to her midlife crisis. The first half of the film sees Cal as a confused man trying to cope with the separation and start seeing other women, with the help of Jacob Palmer, a dashing womanizer. However, things turn out to be more complicated as Cal is not ready to give up his love.

Over the second half, we see how the two men, Cal and Jacob, learn to take a middle road, with Cal being more sophisticated and with Jacob being less. Both start to learn that love is nothing but unpredictable but once one finds it, one should not just give up once it is hampered by any difficulties, be they big or small. What I find interesting about the film is how the directors try very hard not to resort to easy, cliche endings, even though this is almost impossible given the film's genre is clearly that of romantic comedy. Of course, there's no harsh tragedy in the film, but at the end there emerge a hope that some can change to be a better person (both physically in the case of Cal and mentally in that of Jacob) and some (like Cal's own son who falls in love with his own babysitter) just need to soldier on despite the acknowledgement that love cannot be won.

There's nothing new with the film. But if you have some free time on Sunday evening, maybe it's one choice among many.