Crazy Stupid Love (2011)

The opening scene tells that something's wrong with Cal (Steve Carrell) and Emma's (Julianne Moore) marriage:  all the other couples around them in the restaurant are playing footsie.  They're not.  Emma blurts out that she wants a divorce.  On the ride home, she admits to having an affair with David (Kevin Bacon), a co-worker of hers.  Cal is devastated, and he leaves the house that night. 

Cal starts spending his evenings in a trendy bar where a smooth playboy named Jacob (Ryan Gosling) is very successful with picking up women night after night. Jacob notices Cal moping around and telling his marital problems to everyone in the place.  He decides to make Cal his project by changing his look and teaching him how to get lucky with the ladies.

This is not your usual romantic comedy.  There are no "meet cute" moments, and none of the usual contrived obstacles that people have to overcome to get to true love.  Instead, characters muddle around -- like in real life -- to try and sort things out and handle the changes and surprises along the way.  The 'B' stories support the 'A' story very well: the love that Cal's son Robbie (Jonah Bobo) has for his babysitter, Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), unaware that Jessica loves someone else close to him and Hannah's (Emma Stone) lackluster relationship with a clueless lawyer named Richard (Josh Groban). 

I like Steve Carrell (Get Smart, Little Miss Sunshine) because he always has this hangdog look about him when playing characters who have been put upon.  Emma Stone (The Help) is good as a woman who's dangerously close to settling for the wrong man.  Marisa Tomei ("A Different World") makes the most of her role as a woman whom Cal meets after his break-up with his wife. 

Date Night (1010)

Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell, Tina Fey) are an average New Jersey suburban couple with two kids.  They have fallen into the same old, same old as far as ther married life is concerned.  When they learn that friends of there have decided to divorce, it shakes them up.  Phil decides that their regular date night -- which has become predictable and humdrum -- needs some thing to perk it up.  He takes her to a fancy new restaurant in Manhattan.

A couple of tough types named Armstrong and Collins (Jimmi Sampston, Common) order the couple out to alley in the back of the restaurant.  They think they are the Tripplehorns (James Franco, Mila Kunis), a couple who has a flash drive with very damaging information.  The Fosters had pretended to be the Tripplehorns when the latter couple did not show up for their reservation at the fancy dancy restaurant.  The two men pull guns on the Fosters, who manage somehow to escape being shot.  When they complain to Det. Arroyo (Taraji P. Henson) NY Police, they spot Armstrong and Collins and figure out they are dirty cops in the back pocket of a gangster (Ray Liotta).  Things get worse for the Fosters from that point. 

There wasn't a big audience in the theater at the time I went to see this movie.  A couple in the back row had a good time, falling out laughing through the entire film.  The rest of the audience, including me, found the story less than mildly humorous.  Mistaken identity plots have been done to death, as well as the variation of the fish-out-of-water storyline presented here.  It was not a good sign when the outtakes that ran at the beginning of the of the end credits and afterwards weren't that funny, either.  As one of the ushers commented after the last outtakes ran, "Now that was a waste of time."

Carell was a lot better in Get Smart (2008) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006).  I haven't watched "Saturday Night Live" (1975-present) in years, so I can't speak on Tina Fey's work there; she was okay in this film.  Ray Liotta was in the classic gangster film Goodfellas (1990).  Taraji P. Henson is an Academy Award nominee for The Strange Case of Benjamin Button (2008).  Mark Walhberg spoofs his former identity as rapper Marky Mark in this film, and Common is actually better known as a rapper.

Get Smart (2008)

Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) is an analyst for CONTROL, a top-secret government agency. He wants to be a full-fledged agent, a desire which is mocked by agents Larabee (David Koechner) and 91 (Terry Crews). Sigfried (Terrence Stamp) stages an attack on the agency, and the identities of its agents are revealed. The Chief (Alan Arkin) then has no choice but to make Max an agent. He sends him out on assignment with competent, confident Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway).

Sigfried, backed by CONTROL's rival agency, KAOS, and assisted by Shtarker (Ken Davitan) amass a collection of destructive nuclear weapons. The goal is to hold the USA hostage. When the goverment refuses to negotiate, Sigfried sets in motion a plan to blow up Los Angeles while the President (James Caan) is visiting the city.

While not all of the gags work, the film does a nice job in attempting to convey the lunancy of the original sitcom (which ran from 1965 to 1970, first on NBC, then CBS). Carell doesn't go for an out-and-out imitation of what Don Adams did with the character. However, whoever picked him for the part was right on the money, because he's charming. Ms. Hathaway plays Agent 99 similar to how the character was on the sitcom, but with more of an modern edge. Dwayne Johnson (aka, The Rock) has fun with his role as Agent 23, a big-man-on-campus type. Arkin has one of the best lines in the film after he decks a cocky Secret Service agent who has insulted him once.

There are several nods to the original show and actors. Max has a picture of Mr. Big on his refrigerator. Mr. Big was the villian on the pilot episode of the sitcom. The phrase "The Claw" is seen written on a pad; that villian also appeared on the show. Bernie Kopell, who was the original Sigfried, and Leonard Stern, the producer of the original sitcom, both have cameos. Bill Murray is seen briefly as the put upon Agent 13. Patrick Warburton shows up as Hymie. An airplane has the name "Yarmy" on the side. Yarmy was the late Don Adams' real last name.

Steve Carell was a cast member on "The Daily Show" (1999-present), and appeared in Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Ms. Hathaway was in The Princess Diaries (2001) and a short-lived TV series entitled "Get Real" (1999-2000). Dwayne Johnson wrestled in the WWE, and has made his mark as an action star in several films including Walking Tall (2004). Alan Arkin was in Catch-22 (1970), and was an original member of The Second City, the famed Chicago-based comedy troupe. Terrence Stamp played villians in The Collector (1965) and Superman (1978).
James Caan, who plays the President, was in "To Sire, With Love" a two-part episode of "Get Smart". He is best known for the role of Sonny, Don Corelone's violent son in The Godfather (1972).

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

A family with problems -- a married couple (Greg Kinnear, Toni Colette) who bicker about the fact that the husband's failure to make motivational speaking career work, a teenage son (Paul Dano) who's taken a vow of silence and hates being around his family, a salty grandpa (Alan Arkin) who was kicked out of a retirement home, and the wife's brother (Steve Carell), a scholar who recently attempted suicide -- are given something to hope for when little Olive (Abigail Breslin) becomes a contestant in a California kids' beauty contest. They just have to get there from Arizona within a short time frame.

This Oscar nominated comedy-drama has a nice, slice-of-life feel to it. My boss remarked that it is a laugh-out-loud film, the kind that is seldom made anymore, and that's true. Breslin is adorable, and I liked the sweet relationship between her and her foul-mouthed grandfather. Kinnear's character, with his "winners and losers" mentality is grating on the nerves in the beginning, but eventually, I grew to like him. I love Toni Colette (The Sixth Sense, Muriel's Wedding) -- she is different in every movie she's in.

What tripped me out were the other little girls in the contest near the end of the movie. I swear if I had a daughter, I would NEVER put her in something like that. The girls were slathered with makeup, wearing wigs and weaves, and in clothing more appropriate for grown women. I couldn't help but think about Jon Benet Ramsey each time one of the girls paraded herself in front of the audience.