Film Review – Stuck in Love
Director: Josh Boone
Screenplay: Josh Boone
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Connelly, Nat Wolff and Lily Collins
Genre: Comedy Drama
Rating:****
Stuck in Love is about novelist Bill Borgens (Greg Kinnear) whose wife Erica (Jennifer Connelly) has left him for a younger man. He cannot forget her and hopes she will return to him. Their two children Rusty (Nat Wolff) and Samantha (Lily Collins) deal with the divorce differently. Sam hates her mother and will not speak to or see her, and she becomes very promiscuous because she does not believe in love anymore, while Rusty drowns his sorrows by getting high regularly.
Even though Bill and Erica have been divorced for three years, Bill spies on her with the hope that she will come back to him, and he is also dealing with the difficulties of raising his two teenage children. His daughter Samantha is publishing her first novel, and Rusty is on a quest to gain life experience. Eventually,the difficulties, trials and tribulations the Borgens go through brings them together and makes them a much stronger family. Wow, wow, wow, now this is my type of movie! It has all the elements (for me personally) that makes a movie brilliant. Drama, love, comedy and a bit of suspense. Plus the actors complemented each other – everyone played their role so convincingly that I thought I was part of the Borgens family.
Stuck in Love premiered in 2012. It did not get great reviews then, but for me this one of the best movies I have watched in the past five years. Why did I not hear about it? Or am I the only person who thinks it is so brilliant? It made me realise that no matter how angry I might be with a family member, they are the only people who will really stick by me through tick and thin. Surprisingly enough I also realised that I have never been truly in love! Yes, I know, it’s sad.
Like Oprah would say, “That was a holy moment”. I had a “holy moment” while watching this movie. It made me be honest with myself and wonder whether I am concentrating on or loving the wrong things or people in life, neglecting or pushing away the people who love and care for me.
Stuck in Love will make you evaluate your life and makes you ask yourself, why am I afraid? And why do I put so much pressure on the people I love and who love me? I had an epiphany while watching Stuck in Love.
This hardly ever happens to me. This is how powerful this movie is to me, and I hope it will remain like that. I will watch it over and over again.
Hollywood should make more movies like this, but I guess it will not be conducive to making money, which is what they always aim for. My heart gets warm and I get teary-eyed just thinking and trying to describe Stuck in Love. I have not done justice to this movie in this review, because there are just no words to explain it.
Because of the not so good reviews, I guess I am the only one who really understands this movie, but I hope it touches at least one more person. So my advice would be to go rent out this movie and watch it over and over again.
