Although I don’t care much for Steve Carrel in the role that made him a star (Michael Scott on the NBC sitcom The Office), I do tend to like his films — especially since the characters he plays on the silver screen tend to be polar opposites of his sitcom persona. So when I saw that Carrel’s 2007 comedy/drama Dan in Real Life was finally available on DVD, I didn’t hesitate to rent it. Unfortunately, it turned out to be quite different from what I expected.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Carrel stars as Dan Burns, a widowed newspaper advice columnist who is doing his best to raise his three daughters. Of course, this means all of his spare time is spent tending to them, which probably explains why he hasn’t been with a woman since his wife died four years ago.
Dan takes the girls to his parents’ home for a Thanksgiving retreat, where they’re joined by many other members of the large Burns family. While out running some errands, Dan meets a woman named Marie (Juliette Binoche) in a bookstore. Marie mistakes Dan for an employee, and he for some reason decides to play along, grabbing a bunch of books for her to read. When Marie finds out that Dan is a customer just like her, she becomes so grateful for his help that she agrees to have coffee with him. They hit it off, and make tentative plans to meet again.
When Dan returns to the family compound, he’s stunned to learn that Marie is actually his brother Mitch’s (Dane Cook) new girlfriend. The two decide not to say anything about their encounter, which leads to a rather complicated situation.
The rest of the film then deals with how Dan tries to control his feelings for Marie out of respect for his brother, even though he he hasn’t experienced this kind of connection with a woman since his first wife.
My Reaction: Wow, I hardly know where to begin describing all the problems I had with this movie. I guess I’ll just start with the characters, none of whom were the least bit interesting or likable. Dan was far too much of a sad-sack doormat for me to want to root for him. I mean this guy let everyone trample all over him without being able to do so much as muster up a single word in his own defense. Who can sympathize with a character as pathetic as that?
Then there was Marie, who just bugged me from beginning to end. Am I the only one on this planet who thinks that Juliet Binoche is NOT AT ALL attractive?? I don’t understand how she could possibly have made this guy fall in love with her over a cup of coffee. I thought Dan’s blind date was 100 times better than Marie, so needless to say I was not pulling for Dan and Marie to end up together.
And where the hell does Marie get off being jealous of Dan and his blind date? She knew how Dan felt about her all along, but that didn’t stop her from being with Mitch, did it? But as soon as another woman showed a bit of interest in Dan, Marie goes off the deep end and realizes that hey, maybe Dan is the guy of her dreams after all? Give me a break.
Another problem I had was with the Burns family in general. Please show me a real family that acts that way these days. They were doing stuff straight out of Little House on the Prairie, for god’s sake. Do you mean to tell me that modern-day families have talent shows, crossword battles, and morning aerobics sessions during Thanksgiving? Uh huh.