Netflix’s Crazy About Her – I Thought Stanley Kramer Was Dead…

Crazy About Her proves that beautiful performers can only do so much. Susanna Abaitua and Álvaro Cervantes are two of the best looking people in show business but the film distracts from their pulchritudinous qualities by maudlin subplots about the mentally ill and a screenplay that is frustratingly predictable. There are dozens of plot contrivances at play but they all ask for the characters to have certain emotional responses to particular events and often these reactions contradict the personality that we have seen up until those points. This shouldn’t have been a Stanley Kramer-esque message film about an ordinary man developing empathy for people who suffer from mental illnesses.

Adri (Cervantes) was a journalist and a playboy who does not plan to settle down with any woman. He is surprised when he meets the impulsive and free spirited Carla (Abaitua). She convinces him to spend one night with her and claims that she expects nothing of him in terms of a future relationship. He is electrified by her presence and the two have an intense one night stand  that causes him to want to spend more time with her. She runs away in the morning and he is confused by the fact that she refuses to spend more time with him. He decides to chase her down and finds out that she is a patient at a mental hospital. This surprises him but he is so attracted to her that he decides to serve as a patient at the hospital in order to get close to her. When she rebuffs his advances, he is very hurt. He finds himself stuck in the mental hospital for several months and befriends several of the patients.

Crazy About Her begins with a typical romantic comedy premise but it fails to fully commit to the tropes. Of course, it is ridiculous when viewers are asked to believe that two attractive people wouldn’t enter into a relationship because of a minor bet or a previous agreement to never see each other again, However, you tend to go along with the contrivances when being in the presence of the central couple who were admittedly likable. This was in spite of the fact that he was a smug, self satisfied journalist who seemingly had no real concerns in his life. The two actors are both good looking in their relatively bland ways and it was commendable that it wasn’t just about Spanish stereotypes.

It was disappointing by the fact that the film failed to dive deeper into the world of Spanish clickbait journalism. We briefly see Adri at his workplace and he seems to make pretty minor contributions to the stories of others. He’s a hotshot who is given several weeks to complete a story on the patients at a mental hospital and one can’t help but wonder whether you could get away with that in today’s economy. This could have tried to be topical by considering the ways in which the journalistic profession has had to change and develop as they struggle to earn money. Crazy About Her does not confront the harsh realities that they face in the 2020s and prefers to live in a fantasy land where they are well paid and don’t have to work with stressful deadlines. As somebody who does a lot of writing in their spare time and tries to keep up with deadlines, this film’s depiction of the job was fairly laughable.

At the end of the day, many might still end up putting this on in the background if they have about two hours of work to get done and don’t want something that is too mentally taxing. You can drift in and out and and that might make the shameless sentimentality more tolerable. If you’re only taking in small doses of something, it seems less toxic.

still courtesy of Netflix

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Zita Short

I am passionate about screwball comedies from the 1930s and certain actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I’ll aim to review new Netflix releases and write features, so expect a lot of romantic comedies and cult favourites.