Stuck in Love - Starring: A Sad Cool Guy in a
Beach House; The Boy I Wish Existed in My High School When I Was Thinking About
Letting Boys Have a Chance With Me; and not one but two Sets of Eyebrows. Also
known as, Greg Kinnear, Logan Lerman, Jennifer Connelly, and Lily Collins.
Director: Josh Boone (HE’S DIRECTING THE FAULT IN OUR STARS! THE FAULT IN OUR
STARS, GUYS. THE. FAULT. IN. OUR. STARS. GUYS!)
Featuring: A Very Precise and Completely Logical Piechart. Also known as, Kennedy Science.
Over the course of a year William (Kinnear), an acclaimed writer, his ex-wife (Connelly), and their teenage children, Sam (Collins) and Rusty (Nat Wolff), weather the ups and downs of familial and romantic relationships.
I really didn’t hate this movie. I
mean that as, like, you know, a compliment. I thought I was going to hate it. I
thought I was going to be all: “shut up Stuck
in Love. Who do you think you are, Crazy,
Stupid, Love.? Because, you’re not. Greg, you ain’t never gonna be no
Steve. And you, Lily, yeah you! You think you can just come up in here and be
all ‘I can be Emma Stone; I can the most down-to-earth, hilarious, awkward,
every-girl that every girl who wishes they were Emma Stone there is’? Because
you can’t, so don’t try. mmk?” But I totally didn’t.
I didn’t hate that Greg Kinnear once again played a sorta forlorn but ultimately chill, understanding dad who is estranged from his wife so he lives on the beach—this is the second time he’s done that; is that officially typecasting for him?
I didn’t hate that they were a family of
writers and I didn’t hate that Jennifer Connelly was an actor in this movie—I
have an unfounded and irrational dislike for Jennifer Connelly; it’s something
I’m not working on. Sorry Jennifer.
I didn’t hate that Lily Collins was a jaded hot girl who is too smart for her own good and therefore she sleeps with everyone to show us how above it she is but really she’s just afraid of getting her heart broken and I LOVED every scene Logan Lerman was even slightly associated with—seriously, that boy might be the most likeable person since Seth Cohen or Emma Stone.
I didn’t hate that the teen brother, Rusty, was a hopeless romantic and I didn’t hate that he and Sam, had one of those so-cool-it’s-creepy relationships with their father.
I did hate that Sam was a nineteen-year-old novelist. That was lame. It could have been slightly realistic since her father was an award-winning author. She would know people. Nepotism, it exists. But they were trying to play it like she did it all on her own merit. Nope. This not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman did not write a book over the summer, send it to the publisher under a pseudonym and get it published, and I don’t like that this movie said she did (seriously, where did she even find the time? She seemed pretty busy going to parties looking for "not love"). Whatever, I’m over it. Chalk it up to the magic of movies. Or maybe I’m just jealous of her success, I don’t know, and DON’T ASK ME IF I AM!!!
The point is, though there were reasons to scoff at this movie’s audacity, I really didn’t. I just watched it and sometimes I even enjoyed it—every time Lou (Lerman) said words—so I am going to say this movie wasn’t awful like it could (should?) have been and I will bestow credit upon the cast? Mostly Logan and leastly Jennifer, and then Greg, Lily, Nat and all other cast and crew members can divide up the remaining 57 percent among themselves.
The actual breakdown of credit should
look something like this:
- 40% to Logan Lerman
- 3% to Jennifer Connelly
- 12% to John Boone, but more because he’s directing The Fault in Our Stars than anything to do with this movie really
- 9% to Greg almost entirely for that speech William gave at Sam’s book launch
- 15% to Nat and Stephen King—the real Stephen King, if IMDB is to be believed—together for that beautifully awkward phone conversation
- 6% to Laura Katz and Andy Ross for the soundtrack, except minus 2% for using “Home”—Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros—because that is just so obvious
- 8% to Lily for not being completely awful as That Girl
- 6% to Kristin Bell for being a sand runner—she would have gotten more but she wore a bra under her sports bra, and that’s just silly
- And the last 3% to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son, Patrick, and Abigail Breslin’s brother, Spencer, for their participation
This is all explained in a neato, super-official, scientific info-graphic below; see Figure 1.1.
Ultimately, Stuck in Love had the potential to be horrible but it wasn’t because the cast managed to make the characters true and full instead of the clichés they were written to be. Plus, I like movies about bookie things—not movies based on books or people who collect bets, but movies about books and writers and writing—so it had that going for it. I think I could watch Crazy, Stupid, Love. and feel the same or better since it’s funnier but this movie didn’t waste my time and my fourteen-year-old self would have been in awe of Sam—figuring that’s how accomplished and grown up I’d be by nineteen—and in love with Lou so she would give it eight and a half out of ten. My twenty-five-year-old self is totally over Sam—it is clear to me now that .06 percent of nineteen-year-olds are “grown-ups”—and in love with Lou so I would give it six and a half out of ten.
Figure 1.1. Source: Kennedy Science
Except Excel won’t let
me give 6 percent of the pie and then take 2 percent of it away so I’m not sure
what Bill Gates is getting paid for.
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