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If you liked "7th Heaven," you'll love "Dan in Real Life." Maybe. The sickest part is, the cutesy-bootsiness almost creeps up on you. You think that it's starting quirky and on its way to clever, then you could swear that Dan (Steve Carell, giving such a natural performance that one would think he's above this kind of shit) is amongst these inhumanly cute characters in the sense that we're there with him, and just as cornered by awkwardness.

Then, a bone-chilling thing happens... It hits you that this movie isn't going anywhere but "cute," and it takes itself quite seriously. Dan is no exception, and it's almost as if the hero, the guy you were about to identify with as a person amongst cutesy cuteypins, is ONE OF THEM!!! From there, you're just a lost soul in a theater, being taunted with each moment to walk out and go live your life... but you don't. You just sit there, praying that, since it all seems so well constructed and that anyone who could construct a story this well must have a brain and some slight grip on reality, it'll get better. At least that was my sad experience.

In time, I found myself walking out to take a piss when I knew a pivotal moment in the story was coming up. I peed without rushing, because I just didn't care. Not only did I not care, I'd predicted it and seen the stupid scene in my head by then. I watched it in my mind while peeing as if I were in the theater. A seemingly backstabbing character was caught red-handed, and someone got punched. And, miraculously, when I returned to the theater (for whatever goddam reason, maybe just to make sure I had psychic powers), the character I saw getting found out in my mind had a bruise of their face to prove my theory. It was as if the movie itself was saying "Yeah... So?"
 
This movie is so white (like the stereotypical kind, as in a family you'd see on the cover of a Hallmark card), the two ethnic characters feel almost like they've been shoved in as if the world of fiction practiced affirmative action. Dan is an advice columnist who's also a widower and father of three girls. He takes the girls on a weekend trip to Rhode Island, where the whole fam (Dan's happily married parents, two brothers, and wives and nephews, nieces, all that shit) is gathered for a weekend of just being together for fun.

Everyone seems to get along, but hey, maybe some kind of conflict will arise, seeing as how this is, after all, a movie with some kind of a conflict in it, right? Whatever. Dan takes off for a little time alone, meets a charming woman (Juliette Binoche, who fits right into this cute crap in the same eery way everybody else does, which is by displaying talent and then making it clear that, no, this contrived bullshit is nowhere beneath her at all), falls for her because, according to the movie, "sometimes you just know," We don't get any more than that, just a long and merry conversation between them that's shoved into a montage that must've appeared in the script like "They laugh. Bond. This is going well."

This is where the sliiight grip on reality the film almost had just disappears, as people start saying shit like "I'm looking for a book that grabs me... Something with a sense of wrongness, but rightness at the same time" and the audience is supposed to go, "Yes, people talk like that." From there on, we just have to be rooting for Dan as he awkwardly makes inappropriate remarks at the table (gasp!) and so-forth, because it turns out that Marie (Binoche) is Mitch's (Dane Cook and Carell's fictional brother) new girlfriend. As Dan slips into the same cutesiness that everyone else is in (even Cook, who I dare say was convincing enough to prove that he's above this crap too while also being a total phucking sellout just by taking this gig), we're left with cute, nothing more. This is a pleasant, cute movie for people who need to believe that the world is pleasant and cute.

Death and romantic pickles, those are all the sources of pain in a world where a family of about fifteen not only gets along just fine for a whole weekend in the same house, but also gets nervous about their performances to each other in the family talent show. Yes, family talent show. These are parents who are so "normal," all they do is prepare meals for the rest of the fam and confront their grown kids about how well their love lives are going. These are teenage girls who, even if they are pissed at their parents, make them apple cider and help build their image for guests.

These are men in love who, when they're just about to run to a perfectly operable car to catch the woman of their dreams before she gets away for ever, stop and sadly sigh "I can't do it. I don't have a license." These are people I've never met, and I don't think that's because I'm from planet Mars. The kinds of jokes that you laugh politely at when your new girlfriend's out-of-touch dad makes them are the kinds of jokes this movie wants you to pay to hear.

They could have just been merciful and called the movie "Dan," because the phrase "in real life" has jack shit to do with anything on the screen once this puppy gets rolling.
 
(two bongs, one to smoke and one to sell to make up for the cost of this dumbass movie if you see it)

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