I have thirty days left in my effort to watch at least one movie a day for a whole year. I started this endeavour at the beginning of the summer movie season in 2010 and will end at the beginning of the 2011 season. It has been a fun journey but it was much easier to devote two hours of each day to a movie when I was unemployed.
Yesterday I screened the 2007 romantic comedy Dan In Real Life and I was surprised at how sweet and authentic the movie was. I could not help thinking of another film with a similar plot, The Family Stone, and how each film handled the same material in such different ways.
Dan (Steve Carell) is a widower with three daughters. He lives in New Jersey and writes a self-help column called "Dan In Real Life" for the local newspaper. Dan and his daughters make the annual trip to the family home in Rhode Island to be with his parents and siblings for a holiday weekend.
Emotionally Dan has been on auto-pilot since his wife died four years ago. While browsing in a bookstore he meets a woman Marie (Juliette Binoche) and they have an instant connection. She reveals she has a boyfriend but gives Dan her number anyway. Dan returns to the family home elated at these new feelings inside him, only to discover the woman is already there. She is his brother's (Dane Cook) new girlfriend. For the rest of the weekend Dan and Marie struggle with their attraction for each other amidst the family gathering.
Dan In Real Life is a smart, funny, sweet romantic comedy that handles the comic situations with authenticity. These people feel like a real family doing real things. None of them behave like cliches or caricatures in order to serve the plot.
Carell is charming as the love smitten Dan. Carell is one of those comedians, like Will Ferrel and Jim Carey, who in the hands of a strong director can have their comedic talents managed to brilliant effect. When they are not reigned in the comedy goes over the top and becomes stupid. But when carefully handled and kept within the bounds of the character they are playing they become amazing. Think of Carey in The Truman Show or Liar Liar, or Ferrell in Stranger Than Fiction. You never have any doubt that Carell is a real dad who loves his kids and mourns his wife even as he engages in some comic antics and witty banter.
Carell is supported by a great cast of actors including John Mahoney, Diane Weist, Emily Blunt and Amy Ryan. In addition Alison Pill, Brittany Robertson and Marlene Lawston all give realistic performances as the three daughters without the over acting (and over writing) that normally occurs in children's parts.
In the beginning of this post I compared this film to The Family Stone. Both films are about a family gathering where a brother falls in love with the other brothers girlfriend. In Family Stone Sarah Jessica Parker's character was written to have all these mannerisms that were used to comic effect but the whole film felt forced. In Dan In Real Life Juliet Binoche plays a charming woman that seems to fit in with the family dynamic, except that she is attracted to her boyfriend's brother, and the comedy arises naturally from the situation.
Dan In real Life is an overlooked comic gem from 2007.
At the Movie House rating *** stars.
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