Bill Borgens (Kinnear) has spent the last three years waiting for his remarried ex-wife Erica (Connelly) to come back to him. In the meantime, he remains stuck in a holding pattern: unable to write anything new, he engages in semi-meaningless trysts with his married neighbour Tricia (Bell). Bill has raised his daughter Sam (Collins) and son Rusty (Wolff) to be writers themselves, but the former remains scarred by her mother`s perceived betrayal and the latter lacks life experience.
There isn`t much in the way of dazzling or original insight in Stuck In Love: writer-director Josh Boone`s film is less realistic human drama than wish-fulfilment fairy tale, albeit one with a few darker moments sprinkled effectively (but sparingly) throughout. That being said, the Borgens family`s romantic travails are reasonably well-executed. As they fumble charmingly through their messy love lives Bill pining for Erica, Sam refusing to be tied down by love until she meets the sweet, determined Lou (Lerman), Rusty falling for messed-up Kate (Liana Liberato) the film runs the gamut from romantic to tragic, sad to sweet.
Boone`s roster of quirky characters is very well-cast (and we don`t just mean the matching eyebrows sported by Connelly and Collins, although that is a stroke of casting genius). Kinnear miraculously manages to keep Bill sympathetic rather than creepy, and Connelly just about succeeds in adding some pathos to her poorly-written part. Collins actually manages to get to the heart of her character, for once, while Wolff works some quiet wonders with the best-written role of a boy stumbling painfully into love and adulthood.
Anyone looking to be completely captivated or unsettled by a film should probably look elsewhere. Stuck In Love doesn`t have anything new to offer its viewers, and there`s definitely a grimmer version of this film that could have been made that might have been more psychologically interesting and realistic. For what it chooses to be, however, Boone`s film gets by with just enough romance and humour, delivered by a cast that makes it work better than it should.
Summary: Stuck in slightly shallow, almost wilfully happy mode, but it`s sweet and entertaining enough.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Shawne Wang