Steve Carell is very good at playing the type of character of a sad, lonely guy (Little Miss Sunshine). There’s just something about this role that makes the audience connect with it, his heartache becomes our heartache. If he gets nominated for this then it’s probably the Oscars way of saying,… “we should’ve nominated you last year, sorry about that, so here’s one for this year and good luck!”
Dan (Steve Carell) is a newspaper advice columnist. He’s a widower and he has three daughters that each has a reason to be mad at him. They all go to the family weekend get-together. Dan meets Marie (Juliet Binoche) at a local bookstore and falls in love with her but he’s soon surprised that Marie is in a relationship with his brother, Mitch (Dane Cook). And so begins the awkward situation.
If I could sum up DAN IN REAL LIFE in one word, that word would be… sweet, and I don’t mean sweet like the way California surfers say it.
You can’t help but feel for Steve Carell’s character. Here’s this widower whose job is to give advice to other people–advice he himself doesn’t even take. He tells his daughter she’s not a good driver but he gets himself into moving violations and a collision, He tells his daughter no one can be in love only in three days but he falls in love with a woman in about the same period of time and the woman is his brother’s girlfriend, for the love of macademia chocolate!
I was upset at her daughters for not understanding their father, but my friend who watched the movie with me had a good point, she said that Dan lied to his daughters and was so focused on something so much that he’s forgotten what should come first, family.
Falling in love is not the mistake, the mistake is made when during the process, we disregard and ignore some of the most important people in our lives.
Some of us have been there–we like someone that we know we can’t be with, but there’s always a friend who’ll say what Dane Cook said in this movie, “If there’s no Rock on the finger, then it’s still anybody’s game!”
I’ve always agreed with that philosophy.
I’m not saying it’s okay for you go and try to separate someone from a relationship that he or she is currently in.
So don’t go around telling people that because it’s not what I stand for.
What I’m saying is… who’s to say that that you can’t make her happier than that other person she’s seeing. Just like my friend said… if she allows you to get to know her (Marie gave Dan her phone number instead of saying no and that she was in a relationship) then you’d know you still have a chance. Love is a tricky thing. The only solution is to let love open the door.
DAN IN REAL LIFE is an excellent romantic/comedy despite some complaints that say that there are not enough character development or that there’s not much between Mitch and Dan as brothers or the relationship between Mitch and Marie.
If you’re a fan of this genre, you’d definitely want to add this to your collection.
* Place the cursor on the picture below to check my rating for this film
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