Dir. Peter Hedges, US, 2007, 98 minutes
Cast: Steve Carell, Juliette Binoche, Dane Cook
Review by Michelle Moore
Variously described as a “dramedy”, Dan In Real Life is more drama, with very little comedy and what attempts it does make at humour are fairly pointless, leaving the audience cold. For what should have been the exciting and quite funny tale of a family reunion ends up being a rather lacking tale of a man who falls for his brother’s girlfriend, making for an uninspired plot and yawn-inducing topic.
Added to this, the film is poorly structured, rushing headlong into the narrative without any exposition. We are half an hour in before we even find out what has happened to the missing mother. Now, many films do dispense with traditional story-telling conventions but the difference there is that there is still an underlying structure which takes us on an ultimately satisfying journey: there is no such luxury here. It wouldn’t be so bad if the conclusion had some verve to it but its predictability means that this is just an all-round non event.
There is a lack of beginning, which is never a good thing. The film seems to jump in head first to the middle of the story, with no explanation as to integral areas of the narrative; it took half an hour to find out what happened to the mother. The conclusion to the flick was expected and easily predicable, therefore making the film uneventful.
There is the occasional touching moment – such as when Dan (Carrell), sings along to a guitar for the first time since losing his wife – but there are too many scenes left dangling or clumsily resolved. Carrell has previously convinced us he was a 30 Year Old Virgin on the big screen, not to mention a holy man in Evan Almighty but, in his most conventional screen character yet, he fails to convince here as an ordinary father of three.
The most attractive element of the film by far is the scenery, which says it all really. If this is ‘real life’ can we have Carrell back in the world of fantasy, please?
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