Steve Carell always seems to play the loser. Whether it’s the completely ignorant and embarrassing loser Michael Scott on “The Office,” the obnoxious yet gullible loser Evan Baxter in “Evan Almighty,” or the lonely and virginal loser Andy Stitzer of the aptly titled “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” Carell has already been typecast after only a few short years in the limelight.
Unfortunately, unlike his previous alter-egos, Carell’s character in his new film “Dan in Real Life,” Dan Burns, has no similarly lovable backbone ““ he just can’t win.
The film follows Dan, a widower and New Jersey advice columnist, and his three young daughters as they head up the Eastern seaboard for a weekend of trite family fun and bonding. However, as always, things go greatly off course as Dan meets “the girl of his dreams” in town, only to learn later that this mystery woman, Marie, is in fact his brother’s girlfriend. The battle lines are drawn and chaos soon ensues.
It’s not that “Dan in Real Life” is a bad film, but mediocrity in the face of such great potential is almost worse. The film touches on interesting story lines, such as a father deciding if he’s too hard on his kids, a man still in love and not ready to move on from a woman he’s long been without, and whether love really should conquer all, even family. There is even an amazing cast including the talented Carell, “Frasier” patriarch John Mahoney, Dianne Wiest of “Law and Order”, Juliette Binoche and “The Devil Wears Prada” breakout Emily Blunt. Dane Cook is also in the film, but like many of the other films he’s in, the audience is left wondering how and why Cook is in a film instead of on a comedy stage, even though he does a slightly more believable job this time around.
The only thing missing from this cast is the most important ingredient for such a family-oriented tale: chemistry. No matter how many good, old, cliche games the clan partakes in throughout the weekend ““ charades, crossword challenges, touch football, etc. ““ they magnify the lack of chemistry rather than repair it. Mahoney and Wiest do a manageable job as Dan’s concerned parents, but it’s the cold relationship between Dan and Cook’s character Mitch and the even more sparkless romance between Mitch and Marie (Binoche) that really take the cake.
Even a much-needed adrenaline boost from Blunt as a blind date going right for Mitch and as totally wrong for her intended companion Dan adds only a few interesting bumps to this completely ordinary story.
As for the main star-crossed lovers, Dan and Marie, there have been worse on-screen couples (“Alex and Emma” anyone?), but there have also have been many much better (Carell and Catherine Keener in “The 40 Year Old Virgin” for example). Everything from their initial meeting, where Dan just rambles about himself for hours on end with an occasional giggle from Marie, to their boring and anticlimactic turning point for love in a dark bowling alley, keeps the audience emotionally detached from the inevitable ending.
The only light comes from Dan’s relationship with his children, including the eldest who wants to run away to California for college, the middle child who’s fallen in love, and his youngest daughter, by then the only one still on Dan’s side. Carell sparkles in his moments as an overly concerned parent but, thanks to the uneven balance between Dan the father and Dan the man in love, the resolution between him and his girls is not explored enough to suffice as an up point in this bleak film.
Like our main hero himself, the film “Dan in Real Life” tries very hard to take a stand and reach beyond the status quo. However, it’s hard to expect something new and exciting without teaching an old dog any new tricks.
““ Kate Stanhope
E-mail Stanhope at kstanhope@media.ucla.edu.