I'm going to begin by telling you about my favorite scene in Crazy, Stupid, Love, which is not just my favorite scene in *this* movie, but my favorite movie scene in recent memory. Early in the movie, Ryan Gosling's character, Jacob, hits on Emma Stone's character, Hannah, in a bar in a very obvious, smarmy way; she blows him off (although a RIDICULOUS number of women sleep with him over the course of the movie, while I sit there all, "Really? Women do that? Sleep with a guy they don't even know? I know he's good-looking, but..."). Later in the movie, however, she has a horrible night and storms into the bar where she met him, finds him, and goes over and just starts kissing him, all, "Take me home." Once she gets to his house, though, she gets nervous, and she asks him how this usually goes-- what's his best move? After some hedging, he admits that he usually tries to bring the conversation around to the movie Dirty Dancing. When she expresses skepticism, he explains that he can do the lift from Dirty Dancing; he tells women that, then puts on "Time of My Life," and does it: "They usually want to sleep with me after that." So then, of course, he puts on the song, and he really does lift her over his head, and then they wind up talking all night, and if they do sleep together (which I think they probably don't, that night), it happens offscreen, and it's just unbelievably charming. In that scene, they start to fall in love, and the movie really sells itself to me, even though this actually happens pretty far in.
It is scenes like this that made me love this movie, even though it includes a lot of things that I normally hate, or rather, one thing that I normally hate a bunch of times. You see, I can't stand to watch people be embarrassed in movies; it makes me literally, physically uncomfortable. It's why I didn't like Meet the Parents and didn't want to see any of the sequels. And people in this movie are embarrassed A LOT. EVERY potentially embarrassing or somewhat wrong thing characters in this movie do comes back to haunt them, if they're not caught doing that thing on the spot. Characters make long, personal, impromptu speeches in front of large groups of people. They get into loud, painful arguments with multiple people watching. They run into failed one-night stands at the worst possible time and place. Parents find the embarrassing stuff their kids are hiding in dresser drawers and draw the worst possible conclusions. Pretty much every character in this movie is badly embarrassed at at least one point, and badly hurt at another. And yet...I think the reason I normally hate watching characters be embarrassed in movies is that we're supposed to laugh at them, and I don't find it funny. But here, we're not supposed to laugh, at all; we're supposed to feel for these characters, and the acting is good enough, and the characters are likable enough, that we do.
And the title is pretty much perfect. Love does make you do crazy, stupid things, and the characters do a lot of those things in this movie. But, the movie seems to argue, even when it doesn't work out, and even when it's hard, it's worth it, and you need to fight for it.
This movie also includes a twist that I absolutely did not see coming, but that totally worked. I won't ruin it for you here, but...it was awesome.
So...good movie! This summer has (so far) been pretty solid, movie-wise. Still looking forward to seeing The Help, and still will also probably see Cowboys and Aliens, The Smurfs, and Captain America.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment