usage of 「こってるな」

Question

This is from a scene in the movie クリーピー 偽りの隣人. In the scene, the wife has made a nice meal and it is laid out on the table. The husband sees it and says 「お！すごい。こってるな。」and the subtitle translation is "Wow, you really went to town!".

Is this the verb 凝る？It seems it has the meaning of "to be devoted" or "to be absorbed" as well as the more common meaning of "to grow stiff". So I'm guessing it's his way of saying that she really devoted herself to making a great meal.

Can someone provide a few more examples of this usage of the verb 凝る? （if I am correct in assuming it is 凝る)

Answer 1

yeah, 凝っている is used when you want to describe something is sophisticated, elaborate, intricate, artistic and so on. It’s normally giving a compliment when someone puts so much energy into specific part of something. As for the meal, probably wife’s meal is well-decorated rather than just serving the meal.

I think you can say 凝りに凝っている. Say for me I have a lot of music collection whose total minutes are more than 1 year in my laptop and was especially fond of punk rock, hard rock and heavy metal and have a lot of stuff in the genre. I think it is regarded as 凝りに凝っている趣味 since it’s maniac and not so many people do that.