You love him in
The
Office (Thursdays at 9 PM on NBC,
please watch!).
You love him in The
40-Year
Old Virgin. You
thought he was OK in
Evan
Almighty. But even Derek Jeter strikes out once in a while, so Steve
Carell was
bound to have a stinker eventually, and Dan In
Real Life is it. However, you can't blame
him.
Carell stars as
Dan
– a mild mannered widower dutifully taking care of his three
daughters and
writing an advice column for the local newspaper.
However, Dan’s life is starting to reach a
crossroads. During
the family’s annual
get together, Dan meets a beautiful and mysterious woman, Marie
(Juliette
Binoche), in a local bookstore. Sparks
fly and they plan to get together again. However, they end up
seeing each other
at the family cabin when it turns out Marie is the new girlfriend of
Dan’s
brother, Mitch (Dane Cook).
Can Marie and
Dan end it out of consideration for Mitch, or is it destiny and someone
is on
their way to getting hurt and heartbroken?
Dan In
Real Life is bland. For all of its attempts to
be
kind of quirky and have more of an indie film feel (complete with off
beat
soundtrack and a mildly taboo conflict), co-writer/director Peter
Hedges and co-writer
Pierce Gardener have difficulty capturing the audience’s
heart and soul. The
comedy is mostly slapstick and
predictable, more on the level of Three’s
Company than The Office
(not classic
Three’s
Company with Suzanne Somers and The Ropers, but more like
not so
classic Three’s
Company with Cindy and Mr. Furley).
Then, the drama and emotional parts of the
movie are just dropped in without much explanation because Hedges feels
the
formula calls for us to cry a little bit.
Worst of all, it
feels like Dan In
Real Life has been put
together on the fly with questionable
to non-existent character motivations for their behavior. Dan and Marie battle
because Hedges and Gardner feel it
is time,
or look all googly-eyed at each other because it is time, not because
it is based
on the action or dialogue that came before it or after it.
Carell does
everything he can to win over the audience, and has an amazing amount
of
charisma as well as a bank of audience goodwill to draw on, but he
can’t do
enough to overcome the weak story (and should save some of that
goodwill for a
rainy day, or draw on it for a better project).
He gamely dances silly, acts like a guy losing
control and shows us the
sadness underneath his smiling exterior, but the script
doesn’t help build him
up, give us enough about Dan’s history or his relationship
with the rest of his
family beyond the obvious.
If you
met Dan In
Real Life, you would probably
keep moving along as if you never saw him.
You might want to have the same approach with
this movie.
1
Waffle (Out of 4)
Dan In
Real Life is
rated PG-13 for some innuendo.
Copyright
2007 - WaffleMovies.com
