Movie Review - Dan In Real Life

An older movie review that I made before I created my blog. (Note: There will be many to follow.)

Dan In Real Life

A widower, Dan (Steve Carell), is raising his three daughters on his own (17, 15, and 11) and he is juggling between family and his work as an advice columnist.

Once a year, his entire family gets together at his parents' lake house which includes his parents, his two brothers, his one sister and their spouses and kids. The one brother, Mitch, (the yummy Dane Cook) is not married but his girlfriend will be joining them shortly.

To kill time (and because his mom sent him out of the house to take a break) Dan decides to go to the local bookstore where he meets a girl, Marie (Juliette Binoche). You can see that they have instant chemistry. They end up spending what you can only guess to be several hours talking about everything. Or should I say, HE ends up talking about everything but she is happily hanging on his every word. Then she gets a phone call and has to leave to meet up with her boyfriend...of which she never mentioned having until this point. So they go their separate ways but not before he gets her number so that they can finish their conversation at a later point. She agrees that even though she's seeing someone else, the phone call would be harmless so she gives him her number.

Dan gets back to the house and is walking on clouds that he met such a great girl and he privately tells his brothers who in turn end up announcing it to the entire family. Everyone is happy for him and they all convince him that even though she has a boyfriend, he should make his move to ensure she doesn't become the one who got away. They tell him that since she doesn't have a ring on her finger, she's fair game.

Mitch's girlfriend arrives and you see that it is Marie. Dan is heartbroken but is trying not to show it.

So now Dan is faced with the delimma....should he pretend he doesn't have feelings for Marie in order to let his brother be happy or should he follow his heart and hurt his brother?

This was a really cute movie. VERY funny, and very heartwarming as Dan struggles with not only his feelings for Marie, but also his relationship with his daughters. Every scene is entertaining and most of all the "special room" that Dan sleeps in. (That got many roars of laughter, so I won't spoil it.) I'm confident that I didn't fall asleep, which means there must have been some scenes in the trailer that didn't make it to the movie, so I'm hoping when the dvd comes out there will be tons of deleted scenes. This one is definitely worth watching again and again.

It's funny that when I got to my seat before the movie started, there were only about 10 other people in the theater and by the time the previews began, only about 6 others showed up. And with the exception of one mother-daughter pairing, EVERYONE else was older. I could only picture that everyone in my age bracket and younger was in one of the three theaters showing Saw IV. Knowing this, my heart wasn't really in it for Dan In Real Life because while it was a great movie, I kept thinking about what was going on in the theater next to me and what part in the movie they were up to...wanting to experience the whole packed theater for a scary movie thing again.

So...even though I had already seen the midnight showing of Saw IV on Thursday, I decided to see it again last night. :]

The entire experience was just SO great! And I say experience because being in a packed theater and hearing everyone respond to the shocking and sometimes funny scenes....it was just so neat to be a part of that. You don't get that same feeling watching a movie by yourself. And having already seen it, I knew what was coming up (and amazingly even remembered some of the lines that I found myself mouthing along with the various characters). With the second viewing, I noticed a few other things I missed the first time around, so that was cool!

Kinda makes me wish I would have seen the first 3 in a theater, too. (They were actually running Saw marathons in some cities on Thursday where the Saw IV installment was played at midnight, but the closest city to here was Kansas City....a little too far to drive by myself to see 4 movies. Plus, you all know I would have gotten lost, anyway, and then having to explain to my parents what the hell I was doing in Kansas City at 2 in the morning...because who else would I be able to call at the hour?...NOT a pretty picture. :])

Vixy :]