Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Stuck in Love Blu-ray Movie Review

Get stuck in this wonderful film.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 13, 2013

All it takes is a little time. Fortunately, time is the one gift life will always give until life is no more. In Writer/Director Josh Boone's Stuck in Love, a broken family moves forward while struggling to reconnect, stay away, or chart a new course. And time is a funny thing, the family learns. It's the accumulation of everything that was and the promise of everything to come, both of those sandwiched around the right now, a point that's been completely shaped by one side and that will, in some way, influence what's coming out on the other. It's not always possible to choose what was, and it's certainly not possible to change it, but it is possible to build on the past, learn from it, and adjust the present to try and change the future. And that's what Stuck in Love is really about, under its surface. It's a movie about opportunities to begin again, rediscover what was good, set aside the bad, and make an effort to change the future for the better. Life's journey is not just dependent on foreknowledge or even the unforgiving grasp of fate but also, and for those that really know how to use them, a beating heart, a capable body, a knowing mind, a willing soul, and that oh-so-precious gift of time. Sometimes it's a day, sometimes it's a year, and sometimes it's a lifetime, but, as Stuck in Love would have its audience believe, there's no greater gift than time, time to find and enjoy where life is headed. There's certainly no better way to celebrate time than with family, even if it takes a whole lot of it to get everyone back around the same table one last time or, maybe, for the first time on the first day of the rest of whatever time has to give.

It's not always easy.

Bill Borgens (Greg Kinnear) is a semi-famous novelist living what appears to be the good life in a beautiful oceanside home. But looks can be deceiving. He's a divorced father of two. He sleeps with his neighbor Tricia (Kristen Bell) on a no-strings basis, but he desperately misses his ex-wife, Erica (Jennifer Connelly), who has moved on in life and married a younger, buffer man. She lives nearby, however, close enough that it's easy for Bill to jog on over and spy through the windows. He insists his children maintain journals, and he pays them for their work so they might concentrate on their writing rather than slave away at a thankless job that barely earns them money and doesn't much prepare them for a future behind the keyboard. Both Samantha (Lily Collins) and Rusty (Nat Wolff) show great promise as writers. Samantha announces she's to be published, but not the book her father helped her edit, much to his chagrin. Rusty, a lifelong Stephen King fan, is working on a manuscript of his own.

Bill is so absorbed with his ex that he sets a place at the table for her at Thanksgiving, much to the dismay of his children who would rather just see him move forward with his life. Samantha in particular rejects her father's stance. She's given up on the idea of love and monogamy, choosing to satiate her desires when it's both convenient and necessary, not when polite societal norms and traditions say it's OK to do so. Rusty, on the other hand, pines for a loving, one-girl relationship, and that one girl can only be Kate (Liana Liberato), a beautiful classmate who barely knows he exists. As both children stumble through their adolescent love lives, they come to learn that preconceived notions about how things work don't always prove correct. Life, they learn, has a way of pushing things in another direction, try as they might to force it into their own image.

A broken family doesn't mean a broken life, but sometimes it does mean a broken way of living. Stuck in Love works through a year in the life of a family devastated by divorce and the fallout -- good, bad, indifferent -- that follows. The film is one about growth, growth as individuals and growth as a family unit, even one as strained as this. The family approaches the situation differently through the ways it loves. The father laments the loss of his wife -- he still loves her and can't help but to surreptitiously keep up with her -- but finds a small level of comfort in the arms of a friend with benefits. The mother has moved on and married a younger man but is in love with the idea of reconnecting with her estranged daughter more than anything else in her life. The daughter has given up on the idea of love and commitment and instead falls in love with the idea of anti-love, so to speak, favoring the "hook-up" culture and shunning advances from anyone who shows even a hint of wanting from her a lasting, committed relationship. Finally, the son embodies everything the daughter hates. He's in love with the idea of true love, commitment to one special person, the thing his parents once had and that he hopes to find in his own life. It's a complicated quartet to be sure, but through them the film explores very tangible realities of life and love as their paths take them to unexpected places of failure, success, and many things in between.

This is an excellent film, one that's occasionally awkward, sometimes funny, and unusually moving. It's a picture that presents a balanced look at modern life and how life evolves from perspectives, circumstances, and choices. It's a movie that shows that the complicated organism that is life has no right or wrong answers, no proper way to approach it, no linear path on which to safely travel, and certainly no promise of a particular outcome. Certainly one might try and shape life into how one wishes to live it, but that influence only goes so far when there are other people working their own lives and thereby in some way, wittingly or unwittingly, altering another. It's a story about going with the flow, finding reason and purpose through the madness, learning, adapting, and sometimes just accepting that things change for the better and for the worse. There's a lot in here, a myriad of different ways to interpret it and enjoy it. In that regard, then, it really is a reflection of life. The characters are fantastically drawn as they're shaped and reshaped, following an ebb and flow and surprising the audience more often than not. The cast is fantastic, too. Greg Kinnear nails the part of a successful writer struggling to move on. Jennifer Connelly is strong as a mother desperate to reconnect with her daughter. Lily Collins impresses as a budding writer whose life perspective shifts through the film. Nat Wolff superbly plays the part of the hopeless romantic who learns that first impressions aren't always what they seem.

Stuck in Love Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Stuck in Love features a dazzling high definition transfer. The 1.78:1-framed image produces a fairly smooth and flat HD video-like sheen but nevertheless showcases brilliant colors and solid details. Everything from clothing and facial lines to concrete blocks, bricks, and sandy train look amazingly accurate. Home interiors, too, are very well defined and authentic, never once missing a beat in the delivery of true, lifelike textures. The color palette is naturally brilliant. Every shade, from the brightest reds to the dullest earth tones, are presented with a realistic balance and authenticity that help elevate the transfer a good bit over lesser, similarly sourced HD images. Black levels appear deep and accurate, while flesh tones are good, though perhaps a hair pale in a few spots. There are no major instances of banding, noise, or blocky backgrounds. In total, this is a fantastic transfer from Millennium. Note that IMDB lists the film's original aspect ratio as 2.35:1. The Blu-ray, obviously, is not presented at, or around, that shape. However, the image never appears cropped and the presentation never feels anything less than natural. If information comes to light that 1.78:1 is not not the correct AR, the review and score will be updated accordingly.
Update: It appears 2.35:1 is indeed the correct aspect ratio and that the Blu-ray has been compromised. The score has been reduced by one point to reflect this.

Stuck in Love Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Stuck in Love features a well-rounded Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack and one that's probably the best-case scenario for a film of this nature, i.e. a lower budgeted and dialogue-heavy Rom-Dram. Music is presented very nicely and crisply, enjoying a naturally wide stage -- including a nice bit of surround information -- and a full body defined by a quality low end. Various scenes enjoy robust, realistic atmospherics, notably seasides that offer rolling waves moving about the stage and a nice background din at a bar/restaurant. Gently falling music and rain droplets pelting the top of a car effortlessly enhance one scene in chapter seven. Basic front-and-center sound elements come through cleanly and accurately. Dialogue is consistently clear and focused in the front-center portion of the soundstage. Though there's nothing here really to make this a memorable sort of soundtrack, Millennium's presentation does the movie proud.

Stuck in Love Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Stuck in Love contains two primary supplements.

• The Making of "Stuck in Love" (SD, 27:42): Cast and crew discuss the story, the script's qualities, the elements the film explores, the characters that make the film, Writer/Director Josh Boone's qualities on set, the actors' contributions to both the film and life on the set, and more.
• Audio Commentary: Writer/Director Josh Boone and Actor Nat Wolff offer a rather fast-paced but highly informative track that covers most all of the basics -- how the film came together, cast and performances, shooting locales, Wolff's work as director, the story details, tales from the set -- but flesh them out effortlessly, intelligently, and entertainingly. Fans will definitely want to give this track a listen.
• Previews: Additional Millennium Entertainment titles.
• DVD Copy.

Stuck in Love Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Stuck in Love is one of the finer films of 2013. It's absorbing from the beginning, showcasing smartly constructed characters and a well defined story that's consistently engaging and surprising. It doesn't always go where the audience expects, and even when it seems like it's all falling apart, the movie is really only beginning to coming together. The film exudes a very real sense of life lived, and even if some may not find it fully relatable, there's no missing it's captivating real-life power, charm, and significance. Millennium Entertainment's Blu-ray release of Stuck in Love features fantastic video, solid audio, and a couple of extras. Highly recommended.