Novelist and teacher Bill Borgens still misses Erica, who left him for the younger Martin two years ago. Instead of writing, he spies on them while 'jogging'. His teenaged son Rusty has a secret crush on his classmate Kate, and his daughter Sam is a cynical college student, who prefers superficial one-night stands to a relationship.
On Thanksgiving, Bill still sets Erica a place. Over dinner, Sam announces publication of her first novel. Bill is thrilled, as he's raised them to be writers, but upset it's not the one he's helped her with. Rusty goes to a second dinner with Erica and Martin, but Sam refuses to join, citing Erica's betrayal.
At a bar, Sam's classmate Lou warns her about a sleaze. Despite initially being rebuffed, he persists and they go for coffee. Discussing favorite books, Sam is unnerved by their similar tastes and runs off, fearing a relationship. When Lou doesn't come to their writing seminar, she finds him at his dying mother's house.
Sam, seeing his vulnerability, agrees to go out with Lou. Discussing her novel, she explains that her real mother had sex with another man on the beach and she'd heard Erica was coldly unconcerned if Bill saw them. While listening to Lou's favorite song, Between the Bars by Elliott Smith, Sam begins to cry, afraid of being hurt. Lou promises he won't hurt her, and they kiss.
Rusty reads a poem in class, which is secretly about Kate. As Bill pays his kids to write frequently in their journals he reads Rusty's to check on his progress. When Rusty catches him, Bill says he needs to really experience life to become a better writer.
Rusty and his friend Jason go to Kate's boyfriend Glen's party. He inadvertently sees Kate and Glen doing cocaine, so they start to leave. When they see Glen knock Kate down, Rusty punches him and flees with Kate and Jason. As she can't go home bruised and high, Rusty brings her to his house.
As Rusty is tucking Kate into bed, she guesses his poem was about her, they kiss and begin a relationship. On Christmas Day, they have sex in his closet so it's memorable. Rusty gives Kate a copy of his favorite novel It, and she gives him her favorite album. As she struggles with her addictions, Erica catches her rifling through her medications.
Bill has regular trysts with his married neighbor Tricia, with whom he occasionally jogs. However, he continues to mope over Erica. While Christmas shopping he runs into her and, over coffee, says he'd be a much better husband if given a second chance.
Tricia urges Bill to try online dating, helping him with his look and profile. After a somewhat successful date, he stops by Erica's to leave his wedding ring but he peeks in her window and sees her reading his book. Enheartened, he changes his mind.
At Sam's book-launch, Bill makes a speech about the writing process, quoting What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, his favorite book. Lou invites Erica, who is clearly uncomfortable. Bill encourages her to talk to Sam, insisting she still cares. But when Erica tries, Sam pretends not to know her when signing Erica's copy.
Sam breaks up with Lou for inviting Erica, then gives Kate champagne — unaware of her addiction — who is eventually incapacitated after mixing drugs and alcohol. Sam's classmate Gus takes the vulnerable Kate to his place, so the Borgens track her down. Bill and Erica barge in, finding her unconscious in his bedroom. As they load Kate into the car, Rusty sees that Kate was sexually assaulted, which leaves him in tears.
Devastated, Rusty turns to alcohol and comes home drunk almost every night. While at a convenience store with Jason he runs into Glen, who chases down and beats him. Kate writes Rusty an apology, explaining she's in rehab as she must fix herself. She hopes that one day she could be worthy of him.
Bill, worried about Rusty, suggests he channel his pain into his writing. Rusty asks if he did the same when Erica left, prompting him to ground him. Rusty writes a story titled "I've Just Seen a Face" (after the Beatles song, the one he hears when thinking of Kate). Later, his favorite author Stephen King calls. Sam sent Rusty's story to King, who gets it published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
A frustrated Sam tells Bill he needs to forget about Erica. Bill then confesses he walked out on them when she was a baby for six months and Erica waited for him. He promised that if she ever left him, he'd do the same. When Lou calls Sam when his mother dies, she realizes her own mistakes and how much her mother means to her. She visits Erica and they tearfully reconcile. Sam and Lou get back together, and she helps him through his mother's death.
A year later, Bill has not set a place for Erica at the table for Thanksgiving. A less cynical Sam is back together with Lou. As they sit down to eat Erica comes over and tearfully asks to join them. Bill is taken aback, but happy she has finally come home.
While the family celebrates, Bill again narrates from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
On March 6, 2012, it was announced that Lily Collins, Logan Lerman, Liana Liberato, Nat Wolff and Kristen Bell had joined the cast. It was also announced that the film would feature a cameo from Stephen King, as well as actors Rusty Joiner and Patrick Schwarzenegger in supporting roles.[5] In November, the working title of the movie, Writers, was changed to Stuck in Love. In Australia and New Zealand it was released under the title A Place For Me and distributed by Becker Film Group.[6]
Reception
On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 58% based on 45 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads: "It struggles to enliven its uneven script, but Stuck in Love boasts enough winning performances from its solid veteran cast to offer an appealing diversion for rom-com enthusiasts." One of top critics commented, "The story, while unsurprising, is also quietly satisfying."[7] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 49 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[8]
Soundtrack
Varèse Sarabande released the Stuck in Love – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on May 21 and on CD and vinyl June 11, 2013. The soundtrack features an original score by Mike Mogis and Nathaniel Walcott (from Bright Eyes), and new songs "At Your Door" (by Mike Mogis and Nathaniel Walcott featuring Big Harp), "You Are Your Mother's Child" (by Conor Oberst) and "Somersaults in Spring" (by Friends of Gemini: Corina Figueroa Escamilla, Nathaniel Walcott and Mike Mogis). Complete song track listing:
As Good as It Gets is a 1997 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by James L. Brooks, who co-wrote it with Mark Andrus. The film stars Jack Nicholson as a misanthropic, bigoted, and obsessive–compulsive novelist, Helen Hunt as a single mother with a chronically ill son, and Greg Kinnear as a homosexual artist. The film premiered in Regency Village Theatre on December 6, 1997, and was released in theaters on December 25, 1997, and was a critical and box office hit, grossing $314.1 million on a $50 million budget.
Mask is a 1985 American biographical drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, starring Cher, Sam Elliott, and Eric Stoltz with supporting roles played by Dennis Burkley, Laura Dern, Estelle Getty, and Richard Dysart. Cher received the 1985 Cannes Film Festival award for Best Actress. The film is based on the life and early death of Roy L. "Rocky" Dennis, a boy who had craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, an extremely rare genetic disorder known commonly as lionitis due to the disfiguring cranial enlargements that it causes. Mask won the Academy Award for Best Makeup at the 58th ceremony, while Cher and Stoltz received Golden Globe Award nominations for their performances.
Gregory Buck Kinnear is an American actor and former talk show host. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in As Good as It Gets (1997).
Erica Kane is a fictional character from the American ABC Daytime soap opera All My Children. The character was portrayed by actress Susan Lucci from her debut on January 16, 1970, until the last broadcast television episode on September 23, 2011. Lucci was expected to guest star on Prospect Park's continuation of All My Children in 2013, but the appearance never came to fruition due to the show's second cancellation.
Logan Wade Lerman is an American actor. He is known for playing the title role in the fantasy-adventure Percy Jackson films. He appeared in commercials in the mid-1990s, before starring in the series Jack & Bobby (2004–2005) and the movies The Butterfly Effect (2004) and Hoot (2006). Lerman gained further recognition for his roles in the western 3:10 to Yuma, the thriller The Number 23, the comedy Meet Bill, and 2009's Gamer and My One and Only. He subsequently played d'Artagnan in 2011's The Three Musketeers, starred in the coming-of-age dramas The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), Indignation (2016) and The Vanishing of Sidney Hall (2017), and had major roles in the 2014 films Noah and Fury. In 2020, he returned to television with the series Hunters.
Peak Practice was a British drama series about a GP surgery in Cardale—a small fictional town in the Derbyshire Peak District—and the doctors who worked there. It originally starred Kevin Whately as Dr Jack Kerruish, Amanda Burton as Dr Beth Glover and Simon Shepherd as Dr Will Preston, though the roster of doctors would change many times over the course of the series. It ran on ITV from 10 May 1993 to 30 January 2002 and was one of their most successful series at the time.
Stuck on You is a 2003 American comedy film written and directed by the Farrelly brothers, and starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as conjoined twin brothers, whose conflicting aspirations provide both conflict and humorous situations, in particular when one of them wishes to move to Hollywood to pursue a career as an actor.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a 1999 young adult novel by American author Stephen Chbosky. Set in the early 1990s, the novel follows Charlie, an introverted and observant teenager, through his freshman year of high school in a Pittsburgh suburb. The novel details Charlie's unconventional style of thinking as he navigates between the worlds of adolescence and adulthood, and attempts to deal with poignant questions spurred by his interactions with both his friends and family.
Nate Walcott is an American musical composer, arranger, pianist, keyboardist, and trumpeter. He has composed the scores for several feature-length films, including 2014's The Fault in Our Stars. He is a member of the band Bright Eyes, and has played in Conor Oberst's Mystic Valley Band and with singer-songwriter M. Ward. Between 2016 and 2019, Walcott was the touring pianist and keyboard player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, during their The Getaway World Tour.
Lou Carpenter is a fictional character from the Australian soap opera Neighbours, played by Tom Oliver. He made his first screen appearance on 30 March 1988. Oliver appeared for a brief time, having been initially contracted for six months, before leaving and returning in January 1992 as a regular cast member. In 1996, Lou was written out of Neighbours, a move that shocked Oliver as his character had become popular with fans. Neighbours viewers created petitions calling for his return and the strength of their reaction caused the producers to reconsider their decision and reinstate Oliver. Lou became one of the longest-serving continuous characters in the serial's history, having played the role for 24 years.
Nicholas Jasper "Nick" Parrish is a fictional character from the Australian soap opera Home and Away, played by Bruce Roberts. He made his first appearance during the episode broadcast on 4 March 1991 and departed on 10 June 1994.
Gunslinger is a 1956 American Western film directed by Roger Corman and starring John Ireland, Beverly Garland and Allison Hayes. The screenplay was written by Mark Hanna and Charles B. Griffith.
The Kid from Cleveland is a 1949 sports drama film starring George Brent, Lynn Bari and Russ Tamblyn, directed by Herbert Kline, and released by Republic Pictures.
Being Erica is a Canadian comedy-drama television series that aired on CBC from January 5, 2009, to December 12, 2011. Created by Jana Sinyor, the series was originally announced by the CBC as The Session, but was later retitled Being Erica before debuting in 2009. It is produced by Temple Street Productions and distributed internationally by BBC Worldwide. The show stars Erin Karpluk as Erica Strange, a woman who begins seeing a therapist to deal with regrets in her life, only to discover a therapist who has the ability to send her back in time to actually relive these events and even change them.
This Is My Life is a 1992 American comedy-drama film that marked the directorial debut of screenwriter Nora Ephron, with a screenplay written by her and her sister, Delia Ephron.
Jennifer Lynn Connelly is an American actress. She began her career as a child model before making her acting debut in the 1984 crime film Once Upon a Time in America. After a few more years of modeling, she began to concentrate on acting, starring in a variety of films including the horror film Phenomena (1985), the musical fantasy film Labyrinth (1986), the romantic comedy Career Opportunities (1991), and the period superhero film The Rocketeer (1991). She received praise for her performance in the science fiction film Dark City (1998) and playing a drug addict in Darren Aronofsky's drama film Requiem for a Dream (2000).
Vexed is a British comedy-drama, police procedural television series for BBC Two that aired in 2010 and 2012.
Movie 43 is a 2013 American anthology comedy film conceived by producer Charles B. Wessler. The film features fourteen different storylines, each one by a different director, including Elizabeth Banks, Steven Brill, Steve Carr, Rusty Cundieff, James Duffy, Griffin Dunne, Patrik Forsberg, James Gunn, Bob Odenkirk, Brett Ratner, Will Graham, and Jonathan van Tulleken. It stars an ensemble cast that is led by Banks, Kristen Bell, Halle Berry, Gerard Butler, Seth MacFarlane, Leslie Bibb, Kate Bosworth, Josh Duhamel, Anna Faris, Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Knoxville, Justin Long, Jeremy Allen White, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Chris Pratt, Liev Schreiber, Seann William Scott, Emma Stone, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman, Naomi Watts and Kate Winslet.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a 2012 American coming-of-age romantic drama film written and directed by Stephen Chbosky, and based on his 1999 novel of the same name. Logan Lerman stars as a teenager named Charlie who writes to an unnamed friend, and these epistles chronicle his trials, tribulations, and triumphs as he goes through his freshman year of high school. The film depicts his struggles with his, unbeknownst to him, post-traumatic stress disorder, as he goes through his journey in high school making new friends, portrayed by Emma Watson and Ezra Miller. The film's ensemble cast also includes Mae Whitman, Kate Walsh, Dylan McDermott, Joan Cusack, Nina Dobrev and Paul Rudd in supporting roles.
Fighting for Love is a 1917 American silent comedy drama film directed by Raymond Wells and starring Ruth Stonehouse, Jack Mulhall and Jean Hersholt. It was shot at Universal City.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
