Lars and the Real Girl -- Pop culture Celebrity News, Gossip, Reviews & Advice Speedmonkey.net

This thing is basically as harmless as its cuddly, confused lead character, but it's generally boring.

Ryan Gosling is a fine actor, and everyone else in the cast rounds out a nice job overall (acting-wise) as well, especially Kelli Garner as the sweetheart who has a liking for Lars (Gosling), a mustached moron with mommy issues who orders a sex doll and parades her around their small town as his girlfriend.

This is one of those stories that actually may have been ten times more entertaining and appropriate taking place in a big, harsh city, but the problem is that it's not even plausible in the small town it takes place in.

The flick takes a very "real" approach in its humor and dialogue, but would've benefited from being more quirky and odd in places other than mere subject matter, as it puts us in a town that seems real with characters that seem real and then has the entire town make a unanimous decision (that's never entirely spoken of) to follow the advice of the town shrink (Patricia Clarkson, in a role that could've been much more interesting, just like everything else in here) in going along with Lars' little fantasy to help him overcome it.

It would've been somewhat "real" maybe if some nice people did this out of the goodness of their hearts and had to dodge the townies with nothing better to do than poke fun at Lars and "Bianca" (the doll), but this is an entire town of the nicest darn people you've ever met -- heck, not even a bowling alley crowd contains one person who may have a few beers and say something that would hint at the humor of how screwy this guy is.

This leaves us with basically no exterior conflict, as Lars' brother and new sister-in-law (Paul Shneider and Emily Mortimer) are the only ones who even hint at putting Lars in a hospital, and that's all over in the first half hour of what drags out to be 107 minutes (90 would've been more than fine here), and we're left waiting all this time for Lars to get over his little inner demons and move on.

Call me a big jerk, but I haven't seen this big of a pussy lead us through a story since Frodo, and at least he had other people around who fought icky demons and stuff with swords to keep us somewhat distracted.

This film set out to bring a new concept to the table (guy and doll love story) and then not challenge itself in the least, as if it were written by that shy girl in grade school who had some cute ideas but was always afraid to share her story with the class.

The joke of what this is about is one joke, and it just gets beaten to death over and over with simple-ass lines like "(gasp) They never fight!" until it's more disturbing than funny or even cute that other people are partaking in Lars' romance.

As a comedy, it's a one-trick pony, and as a drama it's phonier than a sex doll. Lars is never challenged in the least, all he gets is help from the ENTIRE community (they lost me completely when he claims "Bianca" is sick and an ambulance turns the sirens on to rush her into the town ER), and this is plain un"real"istic in the basic reality the film presents us with from the get-go.

If it were a John Waters flick, sure, whatever, but in this case it would've kept us a tad more awake if "Bianca" decided she wanted to go bungee jumping or leave this small town in search of a modeling career or some shit, anything to get SOMEONE to say "Hey, pal, wake the phuck up, this is the 'real' world."

By the end, with so little progress made to chipping away at Lars' screwiness (the lame statement here, while good-hearted, is that we're aaall a little screwy), we'd do better to see Bianca at least get run over by a truck or something, anything that would harshly snap Lars into reality at least somewhat.

As is, we can't help but think if Lars' next girl (if an actual person) will end up crying herself to sleep every night until she meets a guy who she proceeds to cheat on Lars with. Sweet, but very weak.

(three bongs (whatever, it's a chick flick))

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