In this fortnightly article, Front Row Reviews – your destination for film recommendations – suggests three films you might enjoy based on a recent cinematic release, ranging from the obvious to the unpredictable. This week, our recommendations are based on Crazy, Stupid Love, a wonderful romantic comedy starring Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone and Julianne Moore. If you liked it (and you really should have) perhaps you’d like…

Easy A (2010, Will Gluck)

Crazy, Stupid Love stands out from the rom-com crowd not because of a particularly inventive plot but because the relationships portrayed in the film feel real and three dimensional. Each plot and subplot is beautifully portrayed by a group of actors (both experienced and new) so that the characters are humans, not plot devices or ciphers. Last year’s Easy A displayed a similar attention to detail in every aspect of the film, with a uniformly good cast fleshing out a teen comedy into a witty and warm relationship drama.

Take, for example, the subplot involving Lisa Kudrow and Thomas Haden Church – this is played with as much intensity and care as anything directly involving Emma Stone’s protagonist Olive. You really believe that these people have lives outside of the four walls of the screen. It also features Emma Stone (who just gets better and better) playing a female role in a rom-com who – shock horror – exists beyond her relationships with men in the film. She’s a bright and vibrant screen presence, and although she plays someone similar yet older in Crazy, Stupid Love, it’s so nice to see roles in both of these films that do more than just serve the machinations of the plot.

Scott Pilgrim versus the World (2010, Edgar Wright)

It’s not really a spoiler to say that Crazy, Stupid Love is about, well, love. And about how love is ultimately worth fighting for. It does also, at one point, feature a truly hilarious fight scene. Edgar Wright’s slacktion masterpiece (a personal favourite of mine, I had to recommend it at some point) has a similar message – that love is worth fighting for – although it features lots and lots of fighting, in an amped up, video game style.

It’s frenetic, loud and bright, so really not to everyone’s tastes. In fact, many dismissed it as being stupid or shallow, but that’s missing the depth beneath the kapows and coin explosions. This is essentially a coming of age film, in which perpetual slacker/world’s best 24 year old learns that he needs to learn a bit of respect, and not give up on his relationships. Ramona and Scott both have pretty messed up histories with people of the other sex, yet perhaps for that very reason they are drawn to each other. It’s a lot more real than any standard romantic comedy without evil ex-boyfriends, and as such makes a nice companion to Crazy, Stupid Love (which is not as crazy or as stupid as Wright’s manic film).

Being There (1979, Hal Ashby)

Steve Carell’s schlub Cal, upon being dumped by his wife (an excellent Julianne Moore), leaves the bubble of marriage and enters ‘the real world’, noticeably different, unable to fit in and taught to pose as someone that really, he is not. The ultimate fish-out-of-water film is Hal Ashby’s story of a dim-witted gardener who has only ever lived in one house, and has never seen the outside world. Played by Peter Sellers, he’s far more socially awkward than any Steve Carell character (except maybe Anchorman’s Brick Tamland), yet utterly winning in his state of permanent bemusedness.

See it for a wonderful ending, a sublime performance by Sellers, and a jazzed up version of Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra (the 2001 tune).