Dan in Real Life

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Steve Carrell may be the best reason to see "Dan in Real Life" (Touchstone/Focus), a pleasantly amusing if unremarkable comedy.

He's in top form playing Dan Burns, who is a successful family advice columnist on the verge of national syndication and the widowed father of three growing girls -- Jane (Alison Pill), Cara (Brittany Robertson) and Lilly (Marlene Lawston).

He's decided they'll all go to a family reunion at the rambling Rhode Island house of his parents Nana (Dianne Wiest) and Poppy (John Mahoney). It's a huge gathering that includes his brothers, Mitch (Dane Cook) and Clay (Norbert Leo Butz), sister Amy (Jessica Hecht), plus Clay's wife, Eileen (Amy Ryan), and their kids.

Sensing that their son needs to be shaken out of his still-grieving doldrums, Nana and Poppy shoo Dan out of the house. He drives to a bookstore where he, as they say, "meets cute" with Marie (Juliette Binoche), an empathetic and attractive woman to whom, over lunch, he pours out his life story. And of course, he finds himself falling in love, but has she?

When they part, she seems oddly evasive about giving him her number. Back at the house, he tells the family he's met the perfect woman, only to learn seconds later that she is Mitch's girlfriend and is staying at the house, too.

They keep their prior encounter a secret, to spare Mitch's feelings. And the rest of the film has Dan mooning over Marie, realizing that all the advice he dispenses in his column is doing him scant good now. How will they get together?

Director and co-writer Peter Hedges' film, for all its deficiencies -- like its too-leisurely pace -- is nonetheless likable. Remarkably, for this day and age, there are hardly any objectionable elements. The depiction of Dan's large, loving and chaotic family is another plus.

The negatives are an oblique remark by Clay suggesting that his brother relieve his sexual frustrations in a, shall we say, solitary way incompatible with church teaching, and a farcical scene where Dan and Marie are forced into the shower together (Marie presumably undressed) while a fully clothed Dan gets drenched. But he averts his eyes.

Binoche's Marie is a cipher. How many films have we seen where a couple fall in love, but circumstances (like a prior romantic entanglement) keep them apart? There's usually a strong sense of inevitable attraction that makes viewers root for them to get together. Here, Marie's true feelings are so suppressed, she seems oddly content with the superficial, womanizing Mitch. And there's little chemistry between Binoche and Carrell (the fault of the script, I think).

All in all, the basic setup seems contrived, the ostensible romance earthbound, and the formulaic script not terribly funny. But Carrell's humanely comic presence provides sufficient compensation.

The film contains mild innuendo. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II -- adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops