Dan in Real Life **** (out of 5)

Addy and I went to the Mom and Baby showing of Dan in Real Life last week. (As an aside, if I haven’t mentioned before – this Parent/Baby showing is just an awesome event for the theaters to put on. It only works until Addy is one, so I (and Adam sometimes too) am (are) going to take advantage of it while I (we) can!). (As an even further aside, there really should be a better way to use the singular and plural for situations like that!).

Alright – enough of that. So, Dan in Real Life. Though I had seen Steve Carell on The Daily Show and in Bruce Almighty, I have to say that I never really noticed him until I saw The Office. Well, of course I noticed him, I just didn’t take note of him – if that makes any sense.

So, anyway, we started watching The Office a couple years ago and I quickly became a Steve Carrell fan. I just can’t not watch him – in that way that people just can’t not watch things that they shouldn’t want to watch. But we’ve seen him other places too – and it’s in those places that I’ve become a fan. He seems like such a genuinely nice person. That personality shows throughout Dan as well. He seems like a nice guy struggling to keep it together for his daughters after the death of his wife.

The plot synopsis is pretty simple: meeting the rest of his family for an annual reunion, Dan becomes the center of the family’s pity, all the while secretly desiring his brother’s girlfriend – his brother’s ‘the one’.

The characters are flawed in areas but well meaning and they offer a ‘home’ in the middle of nowhere. Marie – the love interest (Juliette Binoche) is a fine actress, but her character does not seem to understand that she can’t be interested in both brothers at once – which is frustrating to viewers who can see what her actions do to Dan (Carell). However, I think that her actions are probably normal in the real world – it’s just that they are hard to watch when vested in more than just her point of view. It’s frustrating, but it’s not completely damaging to the movie.

Other than that, the movie provides humor and several touching moments. It is not a movie for the ages, but it is a good story. I think it’s worth the time, and both Addy and I left the theater with smiles on our faces.