Review: Dan In Real Life

I may have mentioned in an earlier post that Steve and I went on several movie buying binges over the past month.  In addition to tried, tested, and true favourites like Taxi Driver, Rachel Getting Married, and Vicky Christina Barcelona, we also took a walk on the wild side and purchased several movies we had never seen before.  Dan In Real Life was one such movie.

This movie is a true to form romantic comedy, which I must admit kind of surprised me.  For some reason (i.e. because Steve picked it out), I was expecting some sort of pseudo-intellectual sociopolitical commentary.  Dan (Steve Carell) plays a widowed single father of three girls, who falls in love with his brother's girlfriend Marie (Juliette Binoche) at a family reunion.  In addition, Dan must deal with the usual parenting issues.  He strives to set a good example for his kids without being hypocritical, and struggles over surrendering an certain amount of independence to his teenage daughters (the irony, of course, is that the title of the film shares its name with Dan's soon-to-be-syndicated newspaper column about parenting).  A sequence of awkwardly heart-warming events ensues, as Dan and Marie try to figure out what they are going to do about their feelings for each other.  The plot is entirely predictable, but in a nice way; it's the sort if movie that reminds me why I like movies so much in the first place. Sometimes it's nice when plots just work out the way you want them to.

 Dan In Real Life also has a few absolutely hilarious moments.  Steve Carell, of course, is always funny, as is Dane Cook, who plays Dan's brother Mitch.  One scene involving a song about a woman with a "pig face" comes to mine, but you kinda have to watch it to understand why it's funny, so I won't bother getting into the details.

All in all, I'd say this is good movie.  Not great, but it knows what it is and successfully achieves what it sets out to do.  Watch it on a rainy Tuesday evening with a glass of Pinot and it'll cheer ya right up.