Love’s Labour Lost

CAST: Steve Carell,Julianne Moore,Ryan Gosling,Marisa Tomei,Emma Stone,Kevin Bacon

Rating: **

Know what’s crazy and stupid,and won’t get you any love? Wearing sneakers to a fancy restaurant when you are in your 40s and have Julianne Moore for a wife. This being the movies,it takes an expensive-looking Jacob (Gosling) to tell Cal (Carell) that. And it happens after Cal has lost his wife to the taut and tanned David (Bacon),and is moping about night after night at a bar about the same — one long lament only involves the word cuckold,as a noun,verb,adjective and so forth.

Yes,you can count. For there are long periods where the film labours under its own title,trying to fit to each of the three words,separated by the very self-conscious two commas,and capped by the self-absorbent full stop.

So one entire sequence involves Jacob giving Cal new haircut,wardrobe,manners and bar moves to get over wife Emily. Another involves Jacob himself making the moves,one big one on wannabe lawyer Hannah (Stone) and,such being his ilk,anyone else in the bar. The third involves Hannah and her lawyer boyfriend who is,poor thing,considered too “non-goodlooking”. The fourth involves Cal and Emily’s son Robbie and their babysitter. The 13-year-old thinks he loves the 17-year-old. But the babysitter thinks she loves Cal. Wait,there is a fifth sequence,the one involving Emily and her co-worker David,the same guy she had a brief thing with at Christmas,leading up to the divorce.

Well past the midway mark,Hannah and Jacob do get together in a sequence that gives you an idea where the film may have wanted to go.

However,before you can warm up to that,there’s another sequence involving Cal and a fling that’s supposed to be shocking. But let’s not give away the entire craziness or stupidness.