Click HERE for the rest of the heyallright movie review archives.

Dan in Real Life
Reviewed by Theo Michelfeld
Posted: October 29, 2007

Going to the movies every week, I am exposed to lot of film trailers. In fact, I see a lot of these trailers repeatedly. I do appreciate a heads-up about a promising flick, or a peek at the content of a film that’s already on my radar. But mostly, trailers are off-putting. They convert a film’s genuine creative qualities into bullet points, and frequently they ramp it all up with a hit song, or with a lot of rhythmic sound effects, so that it can begin to feel like a giant corporate cookie-cutter is spitting out the world and its films and the people who might enjoy them into a handful of bossy, inhuman demographics. Studios are, of course, obligated to market their products. And who can blame them for overplaying the best moments in a lousy film? But when they reduce a good movie into something that feels like a threat to viewer autonomy, it’s downright shameful.

The new film Dan in Real Life, for instance, is much better than the trailer that nearly persuaded me to pass it up. This romantic comedy is mostly believable, frequently hilarious, and uniformly nimble at sidestepping its opportunities to cloy and annoy. The film stars Steve Carrell as Dan, a widowed father who meets a lovely but unavailable woman, falls for her over a cup of coffee, and then discovers a few minutes later that she’s his brother’s new girlfriend, and she’s spending the weekend with him and his entire clan at their annual family gathering. 

Steve Carrell is a uniquely funny comedian, and in Dan in Real Life, he does not disappoint. He’s as adept at finding the humor in a healthy, intelligent man as he is at finding the humanity in that spectacular bozo he plays on TV’s The Office. In this film, his character has a beautifully authentic light touch with his parents, his siblings, his daughters, and with the woman who has stolen his heart. At the same time, his circumstances have him twisted into a kind of celestial resentment of his own misfortune, so that he is repeatedly, almost gleefully losing control of his own behavior. It’s a portrait of a resourceful person willfully backsliding out of spite for the cosmos, and it’s not only terrific acting, it’s funny as heck. Hats off, Steve Carrell. You’re a freakin’ genius.

Unfortunately, Dan’s love interest, played by Juliette Binoche, is not as compelling to watch. For one thing the character is written as that generic millennial Hollywood ideal woman: beautiful, smart, kind, mentally balanced—and that’s it. As if personality only begins with an absence of those things. I suspect the writers who meet such women are so blinded by these fundamentals that they fail to see the personalities built on top of them. I blame writers, but in this case I also blame Juliette Binoche, who is damn pretty, but also asleep at the wheel in this movie. I realize Hollywood heroines cannot all be Clarice Starling, but let’s take a moment to appreciate an actress like Marisa Tomei, who is always interesting, regardless of the script. Tomei refuses to coast on the blinding qualities of her character. Someone of her caliber could have added a whole new dimension to this film.

Dan in Real Life, is a romance but it’s also a story of family. And as an interesting twist, this is about the least dysfunctional family I’ve ever seen in a movie. Come to think of it, they’re the least dysfunctional family I’ve ever seen—period. With their multi-generational jazzercising sessions, their living room talent shows, their touch football games and their group bowling outings, they could come dangerously close to bringing out the Melvin Udall-esque, noodle-salad-hating cynicism in any viewer. But in the end they don’t. For one thing, that jazzercising sequence is pretty funny. For another: What’s crazier than a bunch of people who get along? This family may not be sick, but they’re still pretty far out. 

Anyway, forget about the trailer, and go see this flick. After all, since when does marketing have anything to do with the actual product? How many car commercials have you hated and beer commercials have you enjoyed, when you would happily drive one of those cars and would never, in a million years, drink that brand of beer? Film advertising is no different a proposition. Dan in Real Life is a good time; trust me. And the trailers that precede it: Just take those with a grain of salt.

Copyright © 2007 Theo Michelfeld