The trailer for Crazy Stupid Love (Warner Bros., 7.29) suggests that Ryan Gosling is playing a glib, semi-shallow, mind-fucking hound. That’s just what the doctor ordered for this fine and exceptional actor who, I’ve long felt, is too caught up in fascinating technique. He needs to play an average dipshit in a semi-average way. Steve Carell, Julianne Moore and Emma Stone costar. The film is written by Dan Fogelman and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (I Love You, Phillip Morris).

Here’s what I wrote about Gosling during Sundance 2010, after my first viewing of Blue Valentine: “He drives me nuts every time [because] he’s always doing that rop-bop-a-loo-bop, always focused on behaving in his own particular way and making damn sure that we notice this.

“Part of his being inventive and never predictable is that he always imprints and infiltrates each and every film he’s in with a Ryan Gosling mood spray. He’s a behavioralist who lives inside a very deep mine shaft, and when he takes over a movie you’re suddenly deep in that mine with him and noticing that the air is thin and wondering why and feeling it might be time to get the hell out of there, and yet knowing this would be heresy because Gosling is, at the end of the day, a very intense presence with a very shifty bag of tricks that most other actors would never devise, much less resort to.”