Peter Hedges: DAN IN REAL LIFE

[mouton]

DAN IN REAL LIFE
Written by Pierce Gardner and Peter Hedges
Directed by Peter Hedges

Marie: You are smooth.
Dan: No, I’m not smooth. I’m Dan.

If you’re anything like me, smooth and single do not go together. You see someone you like, rare enough as that can be, and you want to say something but you don’t. Or maybe you do say something but it ends up being perhaps the least intelligent thing you’ve ever said in your life. More often then not though, you stare from afar and admire without having to deal with taking that which most agree is the only way to get anywhere in life – a risk. You can’t blame a guy for being a little frightened though. Maybe he’s been burned hard before or maybe he’s trying to focus all his energy on his career. There are reasons, some valid, some not, and all of them can be interpreted as excuses rather than reason. You tell yourself you don’t need it or it isn’t the right time for you but you still wish it were happening. Any way you break it down, it’s not easy. Sound familiar? If you thought yes even just a little, then DAN IN REAL LIFE, the new comedy from director Peter Hedges, is a must-see. It will reach inside of you and somehow manage to both break and warm your heart all at once.

The Dan from the title is Dan Burns (Steve Carell), an advice columnist who is admired for his insight into living a balanced, fulfilling and morally uplifting life. Four years or so before the film opens on Dan waking up to his day, he lost his wife and love of his life. After that tragedy, Dan was left to raise their three daughters alone. Between that and focusing on his career, finding love again was not one of Dan’s priorities. And so he became more functional than feeling. Removed from the power of intimacy, Dan no longer knows what it means to be that close to someone and has resigned himself to never knowing that again. That is, until he meets Marie (Juliette Binoche) in a book and tackle shop in Connecticut on a quiet morning. They’re interaction is casual, comfortable and it catches both of them off guard. There is only one problem really. She is already seeing someone. Unfortunately for all involved, that someone is Dan’s brother, Mitch (Dane Cook). His entire family has come up to their parents’ country home for their yearly visit and Dan must now spend the weekend pining and yearning for the fleeting feeling he had with Marie that morning. It only lasted an hour or so but it only took that long to awaken Dan’s heart from its coma.

With so many family members to deal with (Jack Mahoney and Dianne Wiest are at the helm), DAN IN REAL LIFE does drift away from its grander purpose from time to time. While the cyclone of kids and parents and aunts and uncles makes for trying times for Dan, Hedges also uses it unnecessarily as a means to distract, with the presumption that it would ultimately make for a more complete film. Luckily, Hedges has got Carell to carry the heavy burden. It is a pleasure to watch Steve Carell come into his own more and more with every picture he makes (despite the occasional EVAN ALMIGHTY-sized misstep). He is charismatic, charming and obviously a sharp humorist. As Dan, he is also self-deprecating, awkward and scared. Carell is the rare comedian who pushes himself to find character in his roles rather than rely solely on his comedic instincts and established persona. Perhaps more importantly, he is entirely relatable as Dan. Whether he’s flopping down on the cot in the laundry room where he is subjected to sleep as the only single adult at this reunion or fidgeting around the kitchen, unable to stand still in his anxiety, Dan is every guy who has even been unsure of himself and felt alone in the crowd. Carell gives Dan so much heart that he becomes the heart of the film itself at the same time.

I wondered after seeing the film if I enjoyed the it as much as I did, despite its slight shortcomings (Juliette Binoche – I know you might like to lighten up every now and then but I don’t recommend it unless there is chocolate involved), because of where I am in my life. Would someone who has found that someone else derive as much meaning and comfort from this film? I can’t say. What I can say, as someone who knows what it means to be lonely, DAN IN REAL LIFE knows what it means to be surprised by life and love and how these moments and people need to be appreciated and cherished. It also knows that anyone who might be feeling lonely on any given day or for months at a time needs to be reminded that surprises still happen.

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[oscar jubis]

DAN IN REAL LIFE (USA/2007)

It's perhaps most difficult to make a very good comedy than any other genre film. It's quite a challenge to make something fresh and original, something that avoids following tried-and-true formulas. Dan in Real Life is, more specifically, a family-reunion romantic comedy, one with a strong resemblance to the relatively recent The Family Stone. There isn't anything in it distinctive enough to set it apart from the crowd, and absolutely no doubt as to how it will turn out (you'd have to be terminally naive if you think there's a Hollywood producer who'd hire expensive actors like Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche and allow the director to deny their characters shared bliss). Moreover, the choice of title is rather unfortunate in that Dan's family is too cozy and idealized to belong in the real world. Call me a cynic, perhaps I deserve it, but others have pointed this out. The folks outside the emerging romantic triangle at the center of the narrative are some of the most uninteresting, bland characters in recent memory. I was much more engaged, say, by the families in director Peter Hedges' novel "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" (which he adapted to the screen) and Pieces of April, his debut as writer/director.

Having said that, Dan in Real Life is not without merit. There are a couple of very funny scenes, including one set in a cramped bathroom. More importantly, there's obvious chemistry between Carell and Binoche. The wildly popular TV and movie actor made me care about what happens to Dan, and Binoche's performance gives the film a touch of class. She is quite an accomplished, consistently charming actress who does things with the role way beyond what's on the page. Dan in Real Life would simply not amount to much with, say, Sarah Jessica Parker, in her place.

[Chris Knipp]

Peter Hedges: Dan in Real Life (2007)

What's real about it?

Review by Chris Knipp

Peter Hedges, who penned the screenplays for the admired indie films What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Pieces of April (and he directed the latter) as well as the successful adaptations of Nick Hornby's About a Boy and Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World, has now guided comic Steve Carell of Judd Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin in a romantic comedy about two brothers vying for the same woman at a large family gathering--which will remind you of the one in The Family Stone, or Home for the Holidays, or for that matter Pieces of April, and a wide variety of American ensemble film comedies--all of which are better focused and more successful than this lame, often cringe-worthy attempt to merge Meet Cute with soppily sentimental treatments of death and sibling rivalry. What was Hedges thinking? He and everybody concerned are obviously capable of much better than this.

One thing that's clear is that the main plot points got lost in the overstuffed ensemble shuffle. Even when Carell's character, Dan, a widower and "real world" newspaper commentator with three girls he can't connect with, is in a basement bedroom it fills up with a jumble of family members. Once Carell and a misused Juliette Binnoche have had their tiresome first encounter at a bookstore--whereupon he woos her by talking nonstop for an hour or so--dialogue that happily we're mostly spared--every scene is replete with aerobics, charades, amateur night, dancing, or extras running back and forth, including a bevy of poor child actors who rarely get to utter a line. And this is not to mention some positively sick-making song sessions. Ultimately this is a movie that avoids saying anything at all about love and about how people fall in and out of it. There's even an implied subtext that says love's better avoided or repressed. But it's hard to read any message here, since the primary sound is of static. And if motivations and emotions aren't developed, characters can't be, either.

The writing fudges every key point. What gets Carell so interested in Binoche in the bookstore? We never learn anything about her, nor does he. Suddenly he's all over her, gathering a pile of tones including Anna Karenina and a life of Gandhi, taking advantage of her mistaking him for the salesman. Hasn't that been done before? Yes, and better. Later, when Binoche leaves Carell's brother (Dane Cook), there's no scene showing why. Of course he's an offensive boor, but if she hasn't seen that so far, what makes her see it now? No dialogue, not even a frown, to tell us. The result is a movie whose main developments are predictable, yet inexplicable. Nor has Hedges the ability as a director to maintain a consistent tone (he veers too often in and out of maudlin and slapstick) or to thread the romantic comedy clearly through all the jumble of background. The noise overwhelms the dialogue, and some plotlines and characters got emasculated in the cutting room, or on the computer. Carell's mom, Dienne Wiest (also wasted) is inexplicably sadistic toward him. An ironic, pessimist relative, a potentially funny character, has only two lines, not enough to define him. The lovelorn daughter Brittany Robertson's boyfriend (Felipe Dieppa) is summarily packed off in a car, and that takes care of that little problem. When a writer-director's so short with his characters, how are we supposed to care about them? All Hedges has succeeded in doing is maintaining the noise level, and when it's all over, the memories, despite valiant efforts from the cast, are more embarrassing than funny.