Dan in Real Life
Go to this movie expecting vulnerable Steve Carell, not a rollicking jokester, and you will go with the right frame of mind. Director Peter Hedges (Pieces of April, About A Boy, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape…do I need to go on?) populated the cast with deft comic actors (and untested ones, such as comedian Dane Cook) and then unspooled a story of family and emotional homes and emotional wildernesses. There is comedy, and it’s lovely – the kind of human foible comedy hat makes you laugh with recognition and/or mortification. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s sad, and through it all Carell proves that he’s more than just a shameless buffoon with a gift for awkwardness. Those who have watched him closely already knew that; here is concrete absolution for Evan Almighty.
Carell’s titular character Dan is a widower dad of three girls, an advice columnist and a member of a freakishly close and high-pressure family. The whole clan is thrust together in friendly competitiveness and activity-heavy merriment for a long weekend. Meanwhile, Dan is wrestling with the re-awakening of something within him that died when his wife did. He’s been making it, just barely, raising his daughters and doing his work, but sort of sleepwalking through it. Enter the dame. Dan is exiled within the family by natural circumstance and the main plot arc of the film (Juliette Binoche, luminous and lovable). This exercises Carell’s brilliance with manipulating social dynamics in a scene and leaves us in the audience twisting in empathy.
The family as a group is fit, talented, verbose, and boundary-crushing. Their love is rough and kindly and hard to take, and the whole weekend is awash in different feelings and moments that steer Dan around, powerless and thrashing. Gents, don’t let this deter you – this is a movie about a man and his journey and his burdens, it’s a story of a husband and a dad and a brother and a man who used to be someone’s lover – there are also delicious sensations to process. Bring a date.
Dane Cook surprised the crap out of all of us by being just right – the youngest brother, teetering on the edge of real maturity and just pretending at it. He’s enthusiastic and high energy, but totally serves his scenes and fellow (very accomplished) cast members with style and generosity.
Sondre Lerches’s music and the few extra songs only add to the pleasure of the whole film. Go see it and adore it for what it is and the gifts Steve Carell brings to us on the big and small screen.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 10/26/07
Time in minutes 98
Director Peter Hedges
Studio Touchstone / Focus
