crazy, stupid, love

Another expecting-to-hate-it-but-didn't movie. If you're a happily married middle-aged man with kids, this is totally your flick.

Everybody else, you'll have to let me know. There's a scene where Julianne Moore calls her ex-husband Steve Carell and pretends the water heater isn't working just so she can hear his voice. I swear I almost cried. I can totally see why Steve Carell, a happily married middle-aged man with kids, felt it needed to be made.

And this is a comedy! Not only is it very funny, but it's very well made. There's a moment where the 17-year-old babysitter is telling her 13-year-old charge why she can't be in love with him, and right at that moment it cuts to a wide shot so you can see she's a head taller than him. Early on Steve Carell asks Ryan Gosling why he's helping him, and he says "let's just say you remind me of somebody." By the end you know who it is, but they actually fail to sledgehammer the audience with that one. It's a nice change of pace.

Sometimes I think a lot of Hollywood movies would be 100% better if they simply ended ten minutes earlier. This is one of those movies. It has a goofball coda that almost ruins the whole thing. But not quite. Still highly recommended.