When it comes to romantic relationships, not everything is a bed of roses. Many times, love can be difficult to control and cause devastating effects on people. This is what happens in Crazy, Stupid, Love, the romantic comedy directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, which features a killer cast including Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Kevin Bacon and Marisa Tomei, among others.
The film follows the story of Cal Weaver (Carell), a man in his forties with the perfect life: he has a great job, a wonderful house, great children and has been married to his high school sweetheart for twenty-five years. However, his life takes a turn when he finds out that his wife Emily (Moore) has been cheating on him and wants to file for divorce. This is when his life begins to fall apart. As he tries to overcome his existential crisis, he must also deal with his children's teenage problems. Fed up and overwhelmed by the whole situation, Cal decides to drown his sorrows drinking in a bar, where he will meet an experienced and seductive man (Gosling) who will help him overcome his fears, stop being a failure and become a great man.
More than ten years have passed since the release of this critically acclaimed movie and the actors have continued to play memorable roles, but some scenes from Crazy, Stupid, Love were so remarkable that they deserve to be remembered. Take a look at the most iconic scenes from the movie.
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This scene sets the tone for the entire film, the moment when Jacob (Gosling) takes Cal shopping. Cal showed up to the appointment in horrible clothes, which clearly showed how he got carried away and neglected his self-image. He looked bland and invisible in clothes that didn't fit him, had no style of his own and didn't make an impact on the people around him. The contrast with Jacob was huge: he dressed smartly, didn't care what people thought, and was a much more confident personality who kept going for what he wanted. He was aware of the importance of having the right style and a strong personal appearance in the way you are perceived in life. As Jacob said, "Be better than the Gap," and stay away from buckled wallets. At the end of this meeting, Cal regained some of the confidence he thought lost, but his makeover was not yet over: there were still some lessons to be learned about how to behave in public.
6 Emily Photocopying Divorce for Dummies
Emily's situation was entirely different from Cal's: she made the decision to break up with her husband, but she wasn't quite sure about it yet. At first, when she mentioned it to Cal, it was a relief, an end to the dull life she was immersed in. However, as time went on, and she discovered Cal's new adventures, she began to think that perhaps she had made the wrong decision. Emily was convinced that everything that had happened was due to a mid-life crisis, triggered by so many years of built-up history that made her feel incomplete, so she tried to support her own decision with self-help manuals such as Divorce for Dummies, a book she secretly photocopied in her office and in a hilarious scene.
5 Cal Dreaming of David as His Wife's Gardener
The confrontation between Cal and David Lindhagen (Kevin Bacon), the lover of his wife Emily, took almost until the end of the movie. However, from the very beginning it shows how Cal created a fictional story in his mind, gripped by the anger and sadness caused by his wife's cheating. In that story, David and Emily were a perfect couple, and the man spent his days grooming Cal's former garden. Although this story was nothing more than a dream, it contributed to his hatred for David and caused him to secretly sneak into the family garden to fix it and leave it spotless. In one of these furtive entrances, a hopeful scene occurred in which he had a phone call with Emily in which she asks him for help with a household problem. As Cal witnessed the situation, however, he realized that what she really wanted was to talk to him.
4 Emily and Cal's Reunion With Robbie's Teacher
With Jacob's lessons and some hard work, Cal became a stud in no time. He went from impressing no one at the bar to catching every woman's eye. The first time this happened was with a young woman named Kate (Tomei), who ended up spending the night at Cal's house. It was a one-time fling, as the protagonist never called her again. However, fate eventually brought them together a second time, because Kate was none other than her son Robbie's (Jonah Bobo) teacher. So, when the boy misbehaved in class, Kate summoned both parents, not knowing that Robbie's father was none other than the misguided man who never called her again. This set off a hilarious situation in which Kate took revenge on Cal, and Emily discovered some things she didn't know about her ex-partner's life.
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3 Hannah and Jacob's First Kiss
Hannah (Stone) and Jacob's relationship is a parallel story that runs through the entire plot. Initially, their first meeting was hostile: Jacob tried to seduce her, but Hannah, an educated, cautious young woman in a relationship, refused his offer. However, some time later, Hannah's partner disappointed her by saying that he did not know how he felt about her in a very inconsiderate and outspoken way. This caused her to storm into the bar that Jacob attended and confront him with a remarkable kiss, completely enraged and on impulse. The kiss led to a date that went very differently than what Jacob had expected: he ended up falling in love with Hannah, unaware that she was his friend Cal's daughter.
2 Jacob's Official Introduction to the Weaver Family
This was one of the most epic—and wild—scenes in the movie. On one hand, there was Cal trying to win Emily back in the midst of a romantic gesture involving a miniature golf course and their children. Then, on the other were Hannah and Jacob, who came over to the family home to introduce themselves as a couple. This was how Cal discovered that Jacob was dating his daughter, and Jacob still didn't quite understand how it was possible for Hannah to be Cal's daughter. To add to this, the father of Jessica (Annaleigh Tipton), Cal's children's nanny who was madly in love with Cal, and to whom she tried to send compromising photos, showed up. Jessica's father was totally furious and got into a fight with Cal and Jacob. And the cherry on top was the infamous David Lindhagen arriving with a sweater that Emily forgot in her car, though he showed up at the worst possible moment. This triggers a fight between the four men that ends with police intervention.
1 Robbie's Graduation Speech
The school year came to an end and Robbie, Cal and Emily's son, was chosen to give the graduation speech. However, his message, which started out sympathetic, turned quite hopeless in a matter of seconds. Therefore, his father decided to step in to help him and took the opportunity to win Emily's heart back by talking about love and soul mates. This impeccable speech also proved the radical transformation the man went through, which encouraged him to stand out from the crowd and ended up bringing the couple back together to wrap up the movie with a happy ending.
