The Best Star-Studded Rom-Com Is Being Withheld From Streaming

Crazy Stupid Love was written by This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman and directed by the filmmaking duo of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. Ficarra and Requa are best known for helming films such as I Love You Phillip Morris and Focus, as well as co-creating the Paramount+ original series Rabbit Hole. The film was originally written under the working title Untitled Marital Crisis Comedy before becoming highlighted on the 2010 list of “most liked” un-produced scripts on the Blacklist.

The writing of Crazy Stupid Love is certainly impressive, though my favorite element of the film is its absolutely massive ensemble cast, which includes Academy Award winners and nominees as well as a wide array of comedy titans.

The film features leading performances from Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, and Emma Stone, with supporting roles for Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei, John Carroll Lynch, Lio Tipton, and singer-songwriter Josh Groban. Crazy Stupid Love is the first on-screen pairing of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, though the two have since gone on to star alongside each other in several other critically acclaimed films.

Crazy Stupid Love centers on a middle-aged man named Cal Weaver, who undergoes a midlife crisis after his wife reveals that she has entered into an affair with her coworker and intends to divorce him. The divorce sends Cal into a deep depression, causing him to weep in his office openly and waffle on about his marital strife at a local bar. Eventually, a popular ladies-man named Jacob Palmer agrees to take Cal under his wing and teach him how to get over his wife by engaging in a flurry of no-strings-attached sexual encounters with various women.

Despite seeming hopelessly dorky initially, Cal begins dressing sharper, expressing confidence, and displaying his charm to women at the bar under Jacob’s tutelage. Just as Cal begins to hit his stride, Jacob becomes distracted by a budding relationship with a charming law school graduate named Hannah, which threatens to end his womanizing ways.

While the plot may seem quite basic at first, Crazy Stupid Love begins to weave numerous interconnected plots together with the proficiency of a Christopher Nolan film, ultimately culminating in a few unexpected narrative twists that will leave your jaw on the floor.

REVIEW SCORE

Crazy Stupid Love performed exceptionally well at the box office, bringing in over $145 million against an estimated production budget of only $50 million. Furthermore, the film was well-liked by critics, making it truly bizarre that neither Netflix, Max, Hulu, nor Paramount+ has insisted on snapping up the streaming rights.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to call Crazy Stupid Love my favorite movie of all time, I firmly believe you’d be hard-pressed to find a better-written or better-cast romantic comedy. The project shines so brightly as a straightforward comedy that it appealed to me, even though I was a teenage boy who couldn’t care less about romance when the movie premiered.

If you want to watch the hilarious romantic comedy today, you’ll have to rent or purchase Crazy Stupid Love at digital retailers such as Amazon and YouTube. Despite the frustrating watch model blocking you from streaming the movie directly, I’d say it’s well worth it, as this is a film that needs to be seen at least once.