Dan in Real Life: Movie Review (2007)

Directed by Peter Hedges, written by Pierce Gardner and Hedges, 95 minutes, rated PG-13.

(Originally published 2007)

When it comes to the new romantic comedy "Dan in Real Life," it's probably best to ignore the "real life" part of the title. Just overlook it. Since real life doesn't fit into the equation here, nobody should go to the film seeking it. The movie is too tidy for real life. It dusts life's corners clean in ways that real life simply wouldn't.

What does come through--and the reason the movie succeeds--is that it does a fine job understanding the human emotions and dilemmas of its central characters.

Chief among those characters are Dan Burns (Steve Carell), a newspaper columnist on the cusp of syndication who is adrift in the wake of his wife's death; Dan's three daughters (Alison Pill, Brittany Robertson, Marlene Lawston), a handful of teens and tweens growing up faster than Dan would like; and Marie (Juliette Binoche), the woman Dan falls in love with after they meet by chance at a bookstore.

She's perfect for him--bright, radiant, sexy, disarming. Trouble is, as Dan soon finds out, Marie happens to be the new girlfriend of his philandering brother, Mitch (Dane Cook), who claims he never has found anyone as right for him as Marie.

And there you have it. Since Dan is the kind of guy who can't help wearing his feelings on his face even though he wants his brother to be happy, the plot complications are revealed and, well, you can see where this is going, can't you?

The film, which director Peter Hedges based on a screenplay he co-wrote with Pierce Gardner, takes this situation and these characters, and places them in the hell of a large family retreat in Rhode Island. There, on the shores of the Atlantic, Dan's mother (Dianne Wiest), father (John Mahoney), siblings and their families converge for the sort of choreographed, chaotic time families tend to enjoy in the movies.

In this way, the film recalls Hedges’ last movie, “Pieces of April,” which was set during Thanksgiving, a time when Hollywood’s most dysfunctional families come together to carve the turkey and, you expect, each other’s throats. That film was slight and quirky, filled with just enough familial woes to make it interesting even though it occasionally fell short of expectations.

More often than not, "Dan in Real Life" rises above them. A good reason for that is Carell, star of "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and NBC's "The Office," whose performance bears to mind his turn in "Little Miss Sunshine," in which he was the glummest member of the group. That's also true here, with Carell once again proving he's equally good as a comedian and as a dramatist.

The chemistry he shares with Binoche is the movie at its best. Though their pairing seems unlikely on paper, what matters is how they make it work onscreen. Each comes to their roles with the sense that in middle-age, life has taken away plenty from them, but might be ready to offer a whole lot back. It's how they get there--or, better put, whether they dare to take the risks to get there--that makes the movie satisfying and allows it to resonate through an otherwise formulaic script.

Grade: B