Film Analysis: Crazy, Stupid, Love

Film Analysis: Crazy, Stupid, Love

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Film Analysis: Crazy, Stupid, Love

Introduction

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a movie about a husband living the perfect American dream with a good office job, a breath-taking house, amazing children, and a beautiful wife to match. Unfortunately, Cal Weaver, the husband who had his life going well for him takes a turn for the worse when he realizes that his wife of over 20 years had been having extramarital affairs behind his back. Aggravating the situation further, the wife Emily goes ahead and requests for a divorce to get away from a marriage she considered boring, to say the least. With the urge to have a companion at the age of 40 years, Cal is forced to throw himself back into the dating scene something that he could not imagine doing owing to his low self-esteem issues. At this point he meets Jacob who acts as his wingman, revamping his wardrobe and sense of fashion to be more attractive and eventually ready for the dating scene. Social cognition, communication, friendship, love, and sexuality are all encompassed in the Crazy, Stupid, Love movie.

Social Cognition

In this phenomenon, individuals tend to perceive or accept the behaviors of certain characters in their lives (Miller, 2015). For instance, when two people are in a relationship social cognition comes into play as to how they perceive each other depending on certain circumstances. A husband, on the one hand, might think that concentrating on his daily work routines is critical as it puts food on the table for the family at the end of the day. The wife, on the other hand, cannot understand how the husband goes a whole day without checking in with her to find out how well she is fairing. Such trivial misgivings are what start up conflicts within the family settings. In the movie, as Cal goes ahead to conduct his husband duties in ensuring that his family is well taken care of, the wife feels like there is a void that Cal is not filling and leads her to have relations with someone else. Way after the two had broken up and were living in different quotas, Cal finally admits that he misses his long lost wife Emily and desperately needs her back in his life. No matter how many women he brings back home, none will ever be able to replace the love that he has for Emily.

Communication

In family settings, communication is referred to as the transfer of words, ideas and thoughts between the husband, wife and to an extent the children (Miller, 2015). Without this critical aspect, most families can no longer survive. Between two or more friends, communication is the lending of an attentive ear when our friends have important issues to raise eventually offering solutions or suggestions that will aid in solving the problems being faced. In the movie, communication as a concept can be seen in the event where Jacob readily takes in his newfound friend Cal, hears him out, and eventually turns him into a socially respectable man. The breakdown of communication, on the other hand, can be seen as the cause of the split between Cal and Emily. In the event that they would in the former stages of their relationship have had a proper conversation on what was or was not working, it would have saved them the agony of breaking up, but rather they would have continued enjoying the fruits of their friendship.

Conclusion

Social cognition and communication are used extensively in the movie to bring out the important aspects that individuals in the society tend to miss most of the time. Personal relationships between two or more people tend to depend entirely on how we perceive our neighbors and how well we communicate with them to ensure a long-lasting bond.

References

Miller, R. S. (2015). Intimate Relationships (7th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.