Early Buzz: 'Crazy, Stupid, Love' - Best Romantic Comedy Ever Made?

As the summer movie season rolls along and most of us anticipate films like Super 8, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Cowboys and Aliens, Entertainment Weekly suggests the movie of the summer might be Crazy, Stupid, Love. Yes, the cheesy looking romantic comedy starring Steve Carell as a newly single man who splits with his wife (Julianne Moore) and attempts to reenter the dating scene with the help of womanizer Ryan Gosling, who himself falls for a girl played by Emma Stone. That movie. In the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, the film is widely praised with the headline "Best Romantic Comedy Ever Made (Recently)" and is favorably compared to Jerry Maguire and About a Boy. Read some of the quotes after the jump.

The article (which is not yet online) appears in the June 3/10 issue of Entertainment Weekly (with Jason Bateman on the cover) and was written by EW Executive Editor Jeff Giles. Giles says that while the full reviews won't run until closer to the July 29 release date "EW staffers already feel evangelical about the movie" and that a made-up tagline like "It's better than everything else. No, shut up, it is" would be appropriate to describe it. Here's the trailer just so we're all on the same page.

From the trailer, it seems pretty obvious what's going to happen. As Carell's character becomes more like Gosling, Gosling becomes more like Carell and the pair realize only the girls in question can make them happy. But is that it?

In the article, Giles agrees with producer Denise Di Novi's sentiment that Crazy, Stupid, Love is "kind of Richard Curtis and Jim Brooks smooshed together with Cameron Crowe" and that it has much in common with Jerry Maguire and About a Boy, two films with straight-forward romantic stories that have way more heart than the usual fare.

Carell's acting is praised ("the lonely center around which a funny and touching constellation of love stories revolves") along with Gosling's abs (and "sly comedy) as well as Emma Stone's charisma as the object of Gosling's affections. The on-screen chemistry, especially in an improvised bedroom scene between Gosling and Stone, is also highlighted as a reason why the film works so well. "You get the sense even the actors are surprised by the variety of sparks flying," Giles writes.

Finally, the article ends with the sentiment that while the trailer is amusing and looks predictable, the film goes beyond that:

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a keeper, and it says something true and complicated about love.

Consider me sold, what about you?