"Crazy, Stupid, Love"
Richard's Review: 4 stars
"Crazy, Stupid, Love," a new ensemble comedy about love, lust and relationships, features a familiar premise but an unfamiliar performance.
We may have seen the "no matter how old you get you never understand love" storyline before, but "Crazy, Stupid, Love" also offers up something we haven't been exposed to -- a funny performance from star Ryan Gosling.
As man-about-town Jacob Palmer, Gosling, the usually oh-so-serious star of "Half Nelson" and "Blue Valentine," reveals a previously unseen gift for comedy. The guy very nearly steals the show and that's saying something considering he's starring opposite Steve Carell.
Carell is Cal Weaver, a happily married man whose marriage falls apart when his wife Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him she is desperately unhappy and wants a divorce. Now alone, Cal starts hanging around a trendy LA bar where he meets Jacob (Gosling), a handsome slick talker who calls his dates names like "fancy face." Jacob offers to tutor the newly single man in the art of seduction -- "I don't know if I should help you," he says to his sad sack student, "or euthanize you." -- and dressing well. "Be better than the Gap," Jacob says in one burst of anti-product placement.
What starts out as "Pygmalion" for lounge lizards actually blossoms into a deeper friendship as Cal begins to see the world through different eyes and Jacob meets the girl of his dreams. Interwoven into this storyline are two other tales of love and life -- the trials of Cal's thirteen-year-old son (Jonah Bobo) who thinks his 17-year-old babysitter (Analeigh Tipton) is his soul mate and Hannah's (Emma Stone) search for the right guy.
"Crazy, Stupid, Love" is an ensemble comedy that is also a family drama. It's difficult to speak about the plot in its entirety without giving away some of the story's pleasures, but it's safe to say it's a sex comedy that's actually not about the sex. There's lots of talk about sex and even one very funny sex scene and one very touching non-sex scene. This isn't a prudish movie; it simply uses sex as a springboard to explore all the aspects of relationships.
This is also the movie that should go a long way to erase the image of Steve Carell as that guy from "The Office." He was masterful on that show and has been good in other movies -- particularly as the depressed Uncle Frank in "Little Miss Sunshine" and the title role in "Dan in Real Life" -- but here he absolutely nails the mix of comedy and pathos needed to make "Crazy, Stupid, Love" so memorable.
As good as he is -- and, for that matter, the rest of the cast including Julianne Moore and Emma Stone -- I have a feeling the person everyone will be talking about on the way out of the theatre is Ryan Gosling. He reveals a gift for comedy, a magnificent abdominal area and the ability to take a stereotype and turn it into a living, breathing character. This is a break through performance from the actor who has up till now done his best work in indie films. "Crazy, Stupid, Love" is a deeply satisfying movie. Funny, with adult conversations peppered in and great performances, the movie is a throwback to the kind of relationship movies Neil Simon used to write in the 70s. It's a welcome return to form.
"The Smurfs"
Richard's Review: 3 Smurfin' stars
This live-action/animation hybrid reintroduces the little blue creatures of Smurf Village -- a place where there is no sadness and feeling blue is a good thing -- to a new generation not raised on the effervescently perky pint -- they may be blue but there's not a melancholy one in the bunch -- sized blue creatures.
I was a bit too cynical to buy into the Smurf craze of the 1980s -- they were so popular one writer called them "kiddie cocaine" -- but now I can see it as something other than an hour and a half advertisement for Smurfs Are Us. The new incarnation is a sweet kid's movie with just enough grown-up material to keep the parents interested.
Of course the Smurfs are the main attraction, but it is bad guy Hank Azaria and his evil cat sidekick Azrael who provide the movie's biggest laughs. The live action Gargamel is a classic kid villain, a baddie who's not as smart as he thinks he is, and Azaria plays him with pantomime relish in a performance that is as big as the Smurfs are small. His evil feline sidekick is almost as big a scene stealer as he is.
Voice work is uniformly good, with Jonathan Winters leading the way with his warm and fuzzy take on Papa Smurf's voice. Also clever is the Narrator Smurf (voice of Tom Kane) who provides a play-by-play of the action in dulcet tones.
"The Smurfs" trades on its inherent cute factor and nostalgia for much of its appeal. There are some good messages for kids woven in and the animation is relentlessly adorable but is there anything here for anyone over the age of five? Silly question. Is a Smurf's butt blue?
"Cowboys and Aliens"
Richard's Review: 4 stars
"Cowboys & Aliens," the latest movie from "Iron Man" director Jon Favreau, is the kind of sci-fi film John Ford might have made, or maybe the kind of story H.G. Wells would have told if he wrote a western. There's great scenery shots, lots of galloping horses, chiselled jaws, majestic vistas and yes, giant mysterious aliens.
Based on a 2006 graphic novel of the same name "Cowboys & Aliens" is set in the Old West in 1873. Daniel Craig plays a classic western character -- Jake Lonergan, a stranger in town -- with a twist. Waking up in the desert, he's a stranger to everyone, including himself -- his memory has been wiped clean. Odder still, a mysterious metal bracelet around his wrist. In the nearby town of Absolution, New Mexico he begins to find some clues as to his past courtesy of Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), the settlement's most prominent citizen. Their inevitable showdown is sidelined by what may be a cowboy movie first -- an alien invasion. Soon the stranger starts to regain his memory and his wrist jewellery reveals its real purpose.
You should know going in that the ratio of cowboys to aliens is about 10 to 1. If I had to categorize this movie I'd call it a western sci fi rather than a sci fi western. It's splitting hairs I know, but the onus here is on the horse opera. And Favreau and cast pull it off. Until giant spaceships swoop in, pulling awestruck citizens into their metal bosoms, the movie plays as a credible western. Even when the alien craft first appears, the reactions of the town folk feel real. They're obviously stunned, and decide that these creatures must be what demons look like. It's an old testament via the old west explanation for something they don't understand and it works well. So does Daniel Craig and an increasingly craggily faced Harrison Ford. Craig brings an interesting edge to the stereotypical stranger role and Ford gives the movie some old school heroics. "Cowboys and Aliens" gets a little flabby in the middle -- unlike its buff leading man -- and takes a bit too long to get to the extraterrestrials, but has enough Wowee moments to fill a ten gallon hat.
