![]() Steve Carell plays Dan Burns, a widower, advice columnist, and father of three daughters. This is one of those films that you might have heard of but never saw or, like me, saw it way back when, enjoyed it then, and wondered, "If it was as good as I remember it being, then why wasn't a bigger deal been made of it?" So I purchased it and watched it again and, yep, it is that good. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice. ![]() You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. All goes according to course, and that's exactly the problem with Dan in Real Life.We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice. The family meddles, the Burns girls all have their issues, and The Devil Wears Prada scene-stealer Blunt shows up in a thankless role as a blind date. An unendurable family talent-show sequence in the third act is somewhat compensated for with a lovely set-piece in a bowling alley. Awkward situations ensue as Dan and Marie can't get together yet can't stay apart. After a meet-cute with Marie (Binoche) at the local tackle shop/bookstore, Dan feels the sparks of affection for the first time since his wife's death, then is dismayed to discover back at the house that his inamorata is the girlfriend of his brother Mitch (Cook), a cad who, with Marie, has brought home the first girlfriend of whom his family has ever approved. Most of the movie takes place within the close confines of a family vacation gathering with his parents (Wiest and Mahoney) and brothers (Cook and Butz) and their families in a shambling North Carolina seashore abode. Carell is in his subdued, Little Miss Sunshine seriocomic mode here as Dan Burns, a widower of four years whose life revolves around the care of his three daughters (Pill, Robertson, and Lawston) and his work as an advice columnist. This new film will garner Hedges his biggest audience, and let's hope that it allows him to return to his more quirkily crafted characterizations. Hedges also wrote the screenplays for What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (from his own novel) and About a Boy (adapted from Nick Hornby's book), other works whose distinctive characters stand apart from mediocrity. His previous effort, Pieces of April, followed a similar trajectory of family entanglement, though the characters had more edge and personality than they do in Dan in Real Life. ![]() More had been hoped for in this second writer/director project from Hedges. Audiences are sure to reward Dan in Real Life with audible laugh tracks, but the laughter won't come in response to surprise or astonishment, only as the acknowledgment of a winning execution of a familiar comedic ploy. It's not that there's anything terribly awful with it it's just that what passes for real life in this film is as genially inoffensive and predictable as the average TV sitcom. If this is "real life," then count me out.
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