Ok, to start off, it is a dumb title for a movie, but it is also a movie that is aptly named--you know what you are getting into right off the bat. No secrets. But it worked for me.
At it's heart, it is a study in the varieties of masculine sexual confusion--from start to finish (ok, there are no geriatric love affairs, so the waterfront is not completely covered, but it has all the rest). Steve Carell plays Cal Weaver, an average guy with a family, a suburban house, and a white collar job. He is reported to have a bad haircut and terrible fashion sense. Jacob (Ryan Gosling), who is an adept pickup artist in a local bar tells him this and then volunteers his services as coach in the game of seduction. Cal accepts the offer because his wife of more than two decades, Emily (Julianne Moore), has told him that she wants a divorce, and that she has cheated on him with a co-worker (Kevin Bacon) only slightly less nebbishy than Cal himself (she is not going way out of her comfort zone for her mid-life crisis). Nursing his self-pity at a sleek local bar, Cal meets Jacob, who finds him so pathetic he is motivated to help him, if only to shut him up. Jacob definitely does not see this guy as a threat--something that comes back to bite him later in the movie. In a determined, half-pathetic attempt to even the score with Emily, Cal sets out to score with as many women as he can. Complications, as the saying goes, ensue, but they are not necessarily the ones you might expect. This is unrealistic in many ways but very enjoyable, with all sorts of good actors.
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