Sunday, December 26, 2010

Dan in Real Life

Steve Carell is funny. I think he is too funny for this role. He plays a guy with 3 daughters who lost his wife a few years back and is still struggling to "move on". Carell is too goofy to hold the gravity of this loss ever present. Instead, the film tosses off a glib "oh, and my wife died" set up so that we can get on to the comedic awkward family reunion. Add to this the fact that Carell falls for his brothers new girlfriend (Juliette Binoche) and has to manage hanging out with her for the weekend with his girls and family all looking on. This is written as a conventional romantic comedy and lives up exactly to that bill, nothing more. Pleasant, but avoidable.
3 stars (out of 5)

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