At first glance you could be lead into a false sense that this film is nothing more than you’re standard romantic dram-edy. But this film really turned out to be a lot smarter than first thought and with a great cast some good twists and turns; this film carried me along quite nicely.
In short, we are thrust into the lives of an LA couple Cal (Steve Carrel) & Emily (Julian Moore) Weaver who appear to have reached the end the road in their relationship. When Emily announces that she wants a divorce, Cal would rather throw himself out of a moving car than save his marriage (fair enough I guess).
He then commits himself to the local bar where he spends most of his time ploughing through vodka and cranberries while being rather vocal about his marital issues. The local male slag, Jacob (Ryan Gosling) then steps in after listening to Cal’s constant wails of grief and assumes the role of coaching him on how to re-discover his man hood (no easy task it seems). The two end up on various pulling sprees which eventually result in Cal taking a few lovely ladies home, including one slightly insane harlot played by Marisa Tomei.
Randomly we are also introduced to Hannah (Emma Stone), a promising law student who early on runs into Jacob and fends off his rather crap advances (how and why do fellas think that kind of routine works?!). We do seem to dip in and out of this story line leading us to wondering how this somehow connects to everything else.
The film escalates, the story thickens, and without going into too much detail we have several lives in crisis all interconnected - which makes for some engaging viewing.
Overall this really was a pretty funny flick; it had me cackling in the aisles. It was perhaps a tad on the long side though - I’d decided to drink beer throughout the film and the last 10 minutes had me dreaming sweet nothings around large ‘Niagara’ waterfalls and the rather deafening sound of running water. So my mind was elsewhere I must admit!
But I always enjoy the unexpected & although this still had the very typical frame work of that genre, the performances & direction steared it clear enough that I came out thinking I hadn't wasted nearly 2 hours of my life on some average Rom Com.
Even if I was in some discomfort for the remaining 10.
7 Northern thumbs out of ten.
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