Advice columnist Dan Burns (Steve Carell), a widower raising three daughters, doesn’t think he will ever fall in love again.  But then he is smitten with a woman he hits it off with in a bookstore; unfortunately, she turns out to be the girlfriend of his brother, who Dan is stuck sharing a house with at a big family weekend gathering.

CRITIQUE

Dan In Real Life was one of my favorite movies of 2007, a romantic comedy/drama that does all three very well, while also proving to be a painfully-realistic family tale as well.  Director/co-writer Peter Hedges (who wrote What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and About a Boy, and both wrote and directed Pieces of April) shows a very sure hand with the material throughout; the result is pitch-perfect, and well worth watching.

The main character here is Dan, a very good role for Steve Carell, who is able to use his everyman likeability in a different way than in The 40-Year Old Virgin; here he is required to play a lonely widower trying to cope with his three daughters.  Carell does a great job capturing the vulnerability of this character, particularly as he falls in love along the way and then has his hopes dashed; his character is painful and funny at the same time.

Many romantic comedies today aren’t constructed very well; there often just aren’t very good reasons why the main characters can’t be together from the start, other than communication problems.  But this film does a great job setting up its central dilemma; Dan falls for Marie (Juliette Binoche), we see they should be together, but the catch is that she turns out to be dating Dan’s brother Mitch (Dane Cook).

The result is a great dramatic comedy about frustration and comic longing, as Dan and Marie try to cope with being together with the rest of Dan’s extended family for a long weekend at Dan’s parents’ Rhode Island coastal home.  There isn’t a moment that we aren’t with Dan, as he tries to figure out what to do in what is really an impossible situation, while there are a string of funny, memorable, well-crafted sequences here.

Hedges has also cast the hell out of the tale, many of the actors in fairly small roles, including John Mahoney, Dianne Wiest, recent Oscar nominee Amy Ryan and Emily Blunt, while Dan’s daughters are dead-on convincing as well.  The result pulls off the difficult trick of being funny, moving and always believable, and it is even rewarding on repeated viewings.

THE VIDEO

Dan In Real Life is presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16x9 televisions.  The picture looks crisp throughout.

THE AUDIO

Dan In Real Life is presented in English 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound; there are also French and Spanish language tracks.  Dialogue, music and sound effects come through clear.  There are English, French and Spanish subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

There is a very solid Audio Commentary by director/co-writer Peter Hedges, who talks amiably about shooting in real locations and the difficulty of scenes with up to 19 people in them.

There is a fairly standard 15-minute Making Of Featurette, in which Hedges and the cast talk about filming the movie.

There is a 9-minute piece on the Score of the movie, which largely focuses on songwriter Sondre Lerche, who composed a handful of songs for the film.

There are 20 minutes of pretty solid Deleted Scenes, with optional commentary by Hedges.  Most of the scenes were just cut for pacing reasons.

There are 3 minutes of Real Life Outtakes, basically actors laughing in the middle of scenes.

FINAL THOUGHT