Reel Life Dan

A milestone for our clan this Sunday evening. Due to a large fellowship on Saturday, our church took Sunday night off. At home, Kadie and I fed the kids and then took off to see a movie. What is significant is that this is the first time we’ve left Scooter in charge of her younger siblings for 2 hours so that we could see a movie. (Of course the theater is 1.3 miles from our home, which helps a lot).

Unfettered freedom I tell ya’!

In celebration, a movies review. May it not be the last.

We went to see the flick Dan in Real Life (DIRL) a romantic comedy for the middle aged, and further evidence I suppose that Kadie and I are easing our way into that particular demographic. It stars the likeable Steve Carell and the beautiful Juliet Binoche.

Carell plays Dan an advice columnist who is also a widower dealing with the onerous task of raising three daughters ages 9, 15, and 17. Like the cobbler whose kids have no shoes, Dan’s kids don’t have enough of him as a Dad. The youngest daughter wants his time, the oldest daughter his car and the middle daughter just wants him to disappear.

Every year he takes his brood to his parents’ home on Chesapeake Bay. He is joined there by his two brothers, his sister and all their assorted spouses and kids. The film plays out over three days as the assorted two dozen people engage in Pictionary, touch football, and family traditions like talent shows and walks on the beach.

The central narrative is generated by a chance encounter that Dan has with Marie (Juliet Binoche). Dan has been so overprotective of his daughters that his mom sends him away for some time by himself in the local town bookstore, named the Book and Tackle Shop, a name so small-town cute, it must really exist (Yep).

In the bookstore, Dan and Marie meet, awkwardly flirt and seem to make a connection. In a scene that demonstrates how intimacy can occur without physical contact, Dan shares with her about the loss of his wife which seems to surprise even himself. “I don’t usually talk much about her” he confesses.

After Dan returns to his parent’s home, he is brimming with excitement about his newfound friend and tells his family that he’s met someone special. Sharing in his joy is his younger brother Mitch who has brought home someone special as well. Mitch introduces his new girl friend to Dan and … it turns out to be Marie. The story then unfolds as Dan, Marie, and Mitch try to come to grips with this new reality.

Three things I didn’t like:

1. The Predictability of the Plot – This is usually a big one for me. If I’ve invested 30 minutes in a film and can tell you the direction it is going in, then the screenwriter (who has presumably spent more time with the story than I have) has done a poor job.

2. The Equation of Love and Attraction – Both Dan and his middle daughter (see below) equate these two distinctive realities. Part of the difficulty in adequately portraying love on film is the limits of the medium. Love takes a long time to build and an even longer time to maintain than two hours. I must confess that his criticism could be made of almost every film.

3. The Tidy Ending – The film ends and everyone (everyone!) is appropriately paired off with who they should be. Not hard feelings anywhere in sight. While this might make some people leave the theater happy, it doesn’t confront the messiness of life.

Three things I liked:

1. Steve Carell – I like him in the Office and in the two Almightys. He plays nice and funny well, but I didn’t know if he could play any drama. He does a very good job. Dan loves his family, but doesn’t always like them. Carell portrays well that delicate balance. Part of the emotional satisfaction at the end of the film (as he finds love again) is due to the investment that the film makes in depicting how deep his sense of loss is over his wife. The highest compliment I know is to say that half-way through the film I saw Dan on the screen, not Evan or Michael Scott.

2. The Relationship of the Father to his Daughters – Not many films get this right. In most films the dad is an idiot, or the kids are wise beyond their years…or both. But in this one, there is an entertaining dynamic that doesn’t shy away from the fact that parents and children can love each other desperately and still fight passionately. The most entertaining relationship is between Dan and his middle daughter Cara. Cara has met the boy of her dreams and Dan doesn’t think that she has any idea what love is about and grounds her when he sees her kissing her boyfriend in public.

Cara responds the way preteen and teen girls so often do—with tons and tons of drama. Brittney Robertson plays Cara in a melodramatic, over the top way…exactly the way teens and preteens so often behave. It’s not just that they say “The World is coming to an End!!!” They actually believe it that it is.

3. The Family –DIRL presents family as a mixture of joy and sorrow, best friends and bitter rivals. There is love, there is dysfunction, bad advice, and laughter. The family reunion setting highlights all of the attractions of family. Like other good movies about family (The Royal Tenenbaums comes to mind), it makes the viewer wish we could be a part of that family too.

Overall I recommend the movie. Like the proverbial bumble bee, this movie flies when it shouldn’t. The predictable, sit-com like plot is tiresome, but fortunately the film is not.