"Crazy, Stupid, Love" opens with a montage of couples feet under tables and later there is a clothing montage of turning a nerd into a ladies man. In between we find out that Emily (Julianne Moore) is divorcing Cal (Steve Carell) after she had slept with a co-worker  (Kevin Bacon) while their 13 year old (Jonah Bobo) has fallen in love with his 17 year old baby sitter (Analeigh Tipton) who is in love with Cal. A lot of the film takes place in a singles bar where we get to meet Hannah (Emma Stone), Kate (Marisa Tomei) and Jacob (Ryan Gosling), his chest being  referred to as being photo-shopped by one of the women, who the directors (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa) and cinematographer (Andrew Dunn) lovingly go over his whole body in 2 scenes, even completely ignoring the woman in the second scene who is no slouch in the great body department either.

It
is Jacob who takes Cal under his wing and not only do we get the
clothingmonatge but we also get an endless montage of Jacob in many
different outfits escorting many different women out of the bar to a
very, almost out of place, modern glass home.

This is one of the places that the film falls down because there is no way you are going to convince an audience that Steve Carell will ever be and/or can give off a man about town vibe. Once he leaves the good middle-aged man, husband, father role, unless
the film is concentrating on Gosling's storyline , it all goes flat
until the last third of the movie kicks in and gets back on track.

All the actors do a good job but the writer (Dan Fogelman)
loses his direction in the center of the film getting to the heart of
it by the end including the 'message' in case you missed it.

Another place the film fails is the whole "Dirty Dancing" sequel and if Ryan Gosling wanted to be Patrick Swayze in that scene his 5 o'clock shadow had to go but that being an iconic
movie scene it shouldn't haven't been done because if the writer and
director were looking for a laugh they didn't get it!

The 2 hour movie could have been easily cut by 15-20 minutes but kudos to all for not using the "F" word or 'potty' humor in a 21st century romantic comedy.