Dan In Real Life
Studio: Focus Features
Rated: PG-13
Cast: Steve Carrell, Juliette Binoche
Director: Peter Hedges
WorkNameSort: Dan In Real Life
Our Rating: 1.50
The movie is called Dan in Real Life, but it’s a stretch worthy of Reed Richards to believe that anything in this tepid plate of idiocy would actually happen in real life. Its inciting incident is a meet-cute so stale it wouldn’t hold mustard in a junior college introductory writing course: Beautiful and spontaneous Marie (Juliette Binoche) approaches put-upon, widowed father Dan Burns (Steve Carell) in a bookstore, wrongly assuming he’s employed there. She’s looking for a book but isn’t sure what she wants, then prattles an eye-rollingly long list of details identifying the book she’s seeking. Dan corrals random titles and goofily admits he’s just a consumer; she buys them all anyway and they hit it off. The catch: She is the new girlfriend of Dan’s insufferable brother (Dane Cook, always the choice for insufferable), which is about to make Dan’s family sojourn a lot more awkward. Carell is a great verbal humorist, but director Peter Hedges’ juvenile script has him whoring his talents to the kind of stultifying slapstick usually reserved for Ben Stiller clunkers, pairing asininity with saccharine moralizing that’s as pandering as it is trite. Binoche, though, is a ray of warmth whose solid performance makes this signature brand of Hollywood upchuck easier to swallow.
This article appears in Oct 24-30, 2007.