2 reviews

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Glenn Watson January 1, 2009

Dan in Real Life hardly appeared in cinemas. That's a pity, as it's a quietly engaging antidote to the current glut of teen comedies.

Widower Dan (Steve Carell) falls for a woman (Juliette Binoche) only to meet her again at a family party - as his brother’s girlfriend. Carell excels as the buttoned up father who wants to do the right thing for his three young daughters, but has forgotten how to take care of himself.

The film fancy-footworks itself around a long weekend in which Carell is both the Cinderella and the Ugly Sister. Taken for granted, he's left to sleep in the family utility room, washing machine banging. But his spiteful side comes out in an awkward dinner where he battles unsuccessfully to keep down his jealousy.

But this is a warm and witty comedy with moments of touching pathos and true romantic longing. Binoche is great as the smart-cookie - and very kooky - woman trying to figure out how to be true to herself.

Off-kilter moments paint the picture of an all-too-real and not always likeable family. Awaiting the arrival of a blind-date old-schoolfriend for Dan - Pigface they call her - they sing a piggy-wiggy song that's kind of cruel. Even so, the joke's on them when the girl turns out to be the lovely Emily Blunt.

Romance and responsibility, hopes and dreams, all come together in one neat film: Dan in Real Life is a left-field lesson in movie making - a small-scale story that packs a hefty punch.

Nothing induces trepidation like the decision of a much–loved comic actor - in this case Steve Carell – to take on a dramatic role. Worse still, Carell’s latest film, Dan In Real Life, is (gasp!) a romantic comedy. And one with a plot-line so simperingly twee it’s hard to imagine it coming from the pen of the man responsible for quirky 80s classic ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’. In short, boy meets girl, boy falls (very quickly) in love with girl, boy finds out girl is dating his brother, chaos ensues.

Yet somehow, against the odds, it works, at least some of the time. This is due in large part to Carell’s turn as Dan, the widowed father of three girls who, for the first time in years, meets someone he could actually fall for. Understated, human and wryly comic, Carell is by turns harried parent, hapless suitor, goofy uncle and ineffectually rebellious son.

The plot turns on the annual Thanksgiving family gathering at the rambling Rhode Island holiday home of Dan’s parents, played by Dianne Wiest and the ever watchable John Mahoney. After a miserable journey, Dan arrives in an atmosphere thick with the resentment of his teenage daughters, and is unceremoniously despatched to town while things cool off. Whilst there, Dan encounters Marie (Juliette Binoche) in a local bookshop, and their queasy flirtation leads to coffee and a conversation positively zinging with the promise of things to come. Despite the audible flap of Cupid’s wings, Marie prevaricates when Dan asks for her phone number, and eventually reveals she is seeing someone else. The kicker, wouldn’t you know, is that the beau in question is none other than Dan’s aerobics-instructor brother Mitch.

Dan and Marie spend the entirety of the otherwise too-wholesome family holiday in a game of emotional cat-and-mouse, trying desperately to repress their feelings and spare those of the (clearly unsuitable) Mitch. Dan blusters and sulks when Mitch and Marie show affection, and Marie glowers with jealousy when Dan’s date with an old acquaintance (played by Emily Blunt) goes well. Meanwhile things go from bad to worse with Dan’s daughters. As a successful advice columnist (whose column gives the film its name), it seems Dan is better able to dispense parental wisdom on paper than in real life.

The action plays out in a series of Kennedy-like family traditions: From charades to touch football to boy vs girl crossword puzzles, seemingly all Mother has to do to induce her brood to some fresh clan pursuit is ring the porch bell. Scrooge-like, I found myself siding with the increasingly uncooperative Dan.

Dan In Real Life is a film that is saved, just barely, by its cast. Carell’s performance is a worthy follow-up to his impressive turn as a suicidal Proust scholar in Little Miss Sunshine. Binoche’s Marie is bright and unstudied, and the fault is not hers that it strains credulity that Dan falls for her with such a thud, nor that her accent is explained away by the fact that she is ‘widely travelled’. Not one for the big screen, it nonetheless provides some touching moments and a few real laughs as well as the chance to watch harried everyman Carell put in his most varied performance to date.

Sarah Leach 22 Jan 2008