Stuck in Love is a realistic romantic comedy/drama film.
What drew me to watch this movie from the very beginning was the fact that writing and books are involved a lot in the plot, since the main characters are all writers. The film follows a family and their complex encounters with love.
Let’s be real: love is complicated and it is something that most romantic comedies don’t show. Most romantic comedies deal with the “love at first sight” thing and how the main characters immediately know they are soul mates. Stuck in Love doesn’t deal with that. It shows how love works, the sacrifices you must make to gain it and the deep scarring it leaves once it is over. It also shows the helplessness one feels when a loved one is hurting and the unhealthy side of love; how it can blind you completely.
The movie itself uses the lines of the books written by the characters to introduce them to us. This instantly lets us know their personalities and what they believe in. It’s a very interesting choice of narrative I must admit. The narrative is greatly held together by an excellent cast that includes Lilly Collins, Logan Lerman, and Nat Wolff as well as veterans Gregg Kinnear, Jennifer Connelly and Kristen Bell.
The characters are each crafted so that the viewer can easily relate to one of them. In my case, Lilly Collins’s Samantha felt like watching myself which was weird. She is a newly published writer who thinks love is just an open door for pain and suffering. She is very cynical and makes fun of the different tropes that have to do with the topic “true love”. She is very tough and does not let any type of feelings get to her, and does not allow herself to love. Her character is incredibly well written and Lilly’s performance is the perfect complement.
I think Nat Wolff’s character, Rusty, will be the most relatable character for everyone. A lot of us have been in the position where we love someone and they don’t love us back. Sad but true. It is his character that we see the unhealthy side of love; through Gregg Kinnear’s Bill, we also get to see this.
The value of family is also greatly shown in this film, something that other romantic comedies lack. We don’t see the family get in the middle of the couple or discourage them from pursuing their hearts. This is a refreshing take. The parents are present in their kid’s lives and not just because the kids fall in love and they suddenly need to appear to give the sex talk. Normally they disappear after explaining the birds and the bees and leave their child defenseless in the hands of love. In this film, they are there to help and to also learn from their past mistakes. The entire film leaves the usual romantic comedy tropes behind, not everything because it is still romance but enough to be considered refreshing.
At the end, we see how the lines of the books of the characters come back full circle or how the belief they showed suddenly change for the better. It is emotional and it shows how you must always listen to your heart and how to let go of the past no matter how difficult it is. The past is the past and all we have is the future. We can’t allow a past mistake to dictate the rest of our lives.
You will laugh and cry and it will inspire to continue or pursue writing; words are magical and we can express our deepest desire through them and create something beautiful even if you are suffering.
As the film tells us in its opening scene:
“I remember that it hurt, looking at her hurt.”
Rusty Borgens (Nat Wolff)