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The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 26, 2007

DAN IN REAL LIFE **

A love-triangle romance that plays out among Steve Carell, Juliette Binoche and Dane Cook during a family reunion, 'Dan in Real Life' is a surprisingly plain, sappy, even insipid comedy, considering the filmmaker behind it.

After years as a novelist and screenwriter, director and co-writer Peter Hedges made a wonderful film debut with another family-reunion tale, 2003's indie charmer 'Pieces of April.'

While the family there was truly messed up yet utterly endearing, the 'Dan' clan is boring to the point of aggravation.

Throw in a heavy dose of sitcom artifice and gooey melodrama, and 'Dan in Real Life' becomes toilsome.

Carell's Dan is a widowed advice-column writer. Four years after his wife's death, he's at a solid if lonely state of resignation, devoted to raising his daughters and not even dreaming of new love.

That changes as he and the girls head to the family homestead in Rhode Island, where Dan's parents (Dianne Wiest and John Mahoney) are playing host to their kids and grandkids.

At a bookstore, Dan's sense of romance is magically rekindled by an encounter with Marie (Binoche). The two hit it off immediately, but she turns out to be the new girlfriend of his brother Mitch (Cook), a nice lunkhead who clearly isn't as suited for Marie as Dan.

Awkward moments abound as Dan and Marie conceal their dalliance and rising attachment. Dan becomes increasingly frustrated and callous as his attraction grows, while his family embraces Marie as a potentially new darling in-law.

There are occasional flashes of chemistry between Dan and Marie, which arise more from Carell and Binoche's low-key charm than from the story in which they're forced to muck about.

But their little mating dance mostly alternates between bad behavior by the jealous Dan and stupid gags and hijinks that would have been lame back in the days of 'I Love Lucy.'

If this is real life, give us fantasy.

98 minutes (PG-13; innuendo)

David Germain,

The Associated Press
LARS AND THE REAL GIRL ***½

It may sound like a contradiction in terms to say that a movie about a guy in love with a sex doll is bursting with humanity, but that's really the most apt way to describe the warm, wonderful 'Lars and the Real Girl.'

Ryan Gosling, who earned an Oscar nomination this year as a drug-addicted junior high school teacher in 'Half Nelson' and played a cocky prosecutor in 'Fracture,' further reinforces that he can do pretty much anything. His Lars Lindstrom is an awkward, fiercely anti-social twentysomething who spends his days in a cubicle at a generic company and his nights in the converted garage behind his childhood home.

Friends and relatives are constantly trying to set him up with nice girls they know; hiding behind an array of hideously '80s sweaters and ties and a neatly trimmed mustache, he smiles shyly, says no thanks and scurries off, alone.

Then one day, Lars orders a life-size, anatomically correct doll online. When she arrives, though, he believes she's a real woman - the first 'person' who gets him, who makes him feel comfortable. He introduces her as Bianca, says she's a missionary on sabbatical and that she doesn't speak much English (which explains why she's so quiet, of course). With her slightly open mouth, curvy frame, fishnet stockings and flexible limbs, she clearly wasn't intended for religious purposes, but Lars sees only the purity in her. Their relationship, if you can call it that, is quaintly chaste.

Now this all could have easily turned bawdy and crass. Worse yet, it could have been 'Mannequin.' But director Craig Gillespie shows a surprisingly delicate touch.

Everyone in this bleakly remote Midwestern setting, from Lars' older brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and pregnant sister-in-law Karin (Emily Mortimer) to the family doctor (Patricia Clarkson) and the town reverend, plays along out of respect for his obviously fragile mental state. Plus, he's happy - deeply, radiantly happy - for the first time in his lonely life. (The family's back story is revealed slowly as the film progresses, and it explains everything.)

Of course there are the obligatory sight gags involving the ridiculousness of the doll at the dinner table. But the humor remains deadpan and slyly absurd throughout - never condescending, never mean.

105 minutes (PG-13; sex-related content)

Christy Lemire,

The Associated Press

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