Review of “Dan in Real Life”
In Dan in Real Life, newspaper agony aunt Dan Burns (Steve Carell) is on the verge of breaking the big time with talk of his column being syndicated nationally. His success seems especially deserved as he has been bringing up his three girls, teenagers Jane (Alison Pill) and Cara (Brittany Robertson), and young Lilly (Marlene Lawston), alone since the death of his wife four years earlier. Dan packs the girls into the car for a torturous road trip to the annual family reunion at the home of Grandma (Diane Wiest) and Grandpa (John Mahoney).
Just minutes into town, Dan meets and makes a real connection with Marie (Juliette Binoche) in the local bookstore, but as fate would have it, the pair are later re-introduced – Marie is the new girlfriend of Dan’s brother Mitch (Dane Cook). There are so many things you want to like about Dan in Real Life but this is one instance where you start cooking an omelette and end up with scrambled eggs.
It has the most winning ensemble cast as Dan’s family, but their screen time either feels forced or they’re just expensive window dressing (the great Diane Wiest is completely wasted). Dan’s interaction with his girls is strained and awkward – perhaps the only believable relationship in the film. As a romance, you can believe he would (hell, anyone would) fall for Juliette Binoche, but what she sees in him isn’t obvious to us. Dan is a John Wayne Gacy painting come to life – a sad, angry clown waiting to blow. Sexy!
Then there are moments that were written as comedy, like Dan repeatedly getting pulled up by the same cop, and you can hear the crickets chirping where the writers probably expected laughter. Leading man Steve Carrell is to the naughties as Jim Carey was to the nineties – his presence is ubiquitous to just about any comedy these days. And he deserves this break – he has been solid support in a number of excellent films, as well as being the funniest part of The Daily Show for years. He’s an unlikely leading man in a romantic comedy (which is polite for he’s-not-that-attractive), and while he was perfectly suited to 40 Year Old Virgin and Little Miss Sunshine, he seems to only have two gears – manic and depressed, and one hopes there is more range to him. You don’t see it here. His strength is physical comedy, but his chances to deliver it are few and far between in a film about a chronically depressed widower. I can’t see strong box office for this film, and after the stinker that was Evan Almighty, I’d probably be sweating about now if I were Steve Carell’s agent.
CK
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