I had heard excellent things about Crazy, Stupid, Love… I was very disappointed that I had not been able to see it in theaters.

The film lived up to expectations, and then some.

When I think of all the delightful romantic comedies that stick out in my mind over the years, there are a few that immediately bounce to the surface: my favorite movie of all time, the cult classic The Princess Bride, is a given, alongside Shakespeare in Love and Love Actually. Crazy, Stupid, Love has just joined that list. It’s just great.

I’m not going to bother talking all that much about the story. It is a romantic comedy, after all. Anyway, Emily Weaver (Julianne Moore) has just informed her husband Cal (Steve Carell) that she wants a divorce and has slept with a coworker (Kevin Bacon). Cal does not take this news well, tries to get over his wife with the help of Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling), who teaches him how to get laid. However, things get complicated and wonderfully emotionally fulfilling, without having to become stupid, inane, cheesy, or sappy along the way.

Honestly, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa really didn’t have to do all that much to make this movie great because of the fantastic script penned by Dan Fogelman. The script is smart. It is to the point. It is real, but in a way that still has wiggle-room, that has enough space for those great Hollywood one-liners that we expect in a movie like this and are delivered to us. The one thing the co-directors did do very well was the timing—if a joke is bad, I can see it coming, but every single punchline in this movie caught me off guard and made me laugh out loud. It takes a certain finesse of cinematography, actor performance, and editing to pull off such a feat so consistently, but pull it off they did.

While I only mentioned the major plot before, the really great aspect of the film is all the different storylines, each of them beautifully interconnected in a way that struck me as very Love Actually-esque, which I’m fine with—stealing good ideas is the basis of innovation. Some of them are connected in ways that you wouldn’t even expect, and which I won’t reveal because I don’t want to spoil anything. This is a tough genre in which to create any new ideas, yet Crazy, Stupid, Love does, and more importantly, when it reuses old ideas, it twists them and makes them utterly unique once more. That is true genius.

I was so taken with it that I looked up Fogelman‘s credits. I wasn’t incredibly surprised when I found out that he wrote Cars, Bolt, and Tangled. Pixar practically has him on speed dial at this point. It’s easy to see why: his simultaneous lighthearted dialogue and deep, emotional clarity mesh

in a way that brings me close to tears in a way only those movies can (I have wept openly and without shame during and after seeing Ratatouille, Up, and, yes, Tangled, only to mention a few). I want every single writer in Hollywood to take notes from Fogelman‘s style, and by that I do NOT mean copy him. I mean realize that even Hollywood can have good ideas, and then come up with their own. This should be the norm. The fact that it isn’t is what saddens me.

There are actually very few special features on the Bluray, but they’re not too shabby. The deleted scenes are interesting, although unnecessary (they were deleted, after all), and there are a few great little interview sessions with Gosling, Carell, and Emma Stone (who plays the delightful Hannah), which if you really like the movie, and you really like interviews, you’ll really like. Other than that, there ain’t much, but then again, you don’t really need a whole lot.

There’s a scene about halfway through, right after Carell and Moore have had a rather emotional fight. Moore drives away, leaving Carell standing outside, and it starts to rain violently. Carell looks down, deep in thought, water pouring on his head, and says, “What a cliché.” I almost died laughing. That moment, above all else, is the perfect descriptor of this movie: it may be recycling, but it’s doing so consciously, treading carefully and making all the right moves. It’s just good.