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Actors:

Steve Carell
Juliette Binoche
Dane Cook
Dianne Wiest
John Mahoney
Norbert Leo Butz

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A widower finds out that the girl that he may like is actually dating his brother. He discovers this truth when he attends a family gathering.

10/25/2008 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

Expected So Much More ...

I've been a Steve Carell for some time now, but always felt his talents are an actor were pretty limited. With Dan in Real Life, I've changed my mind - it's Steve Carell's best work to date, in a film that has all the components for a good romantic comedy ... and yet somehow, ultimately, comes up a bit short.
Dan Burns (Carell) is a widower of four years, with three daughters, who writes a popular local newspaper column that emphasizes family values and raising kids in the proper manner. Dan in the newspaper has it all together, but Dan in real life is dealing with the all-too-real frustrations of pre-teen, tween, and teenage daughters. He's a good parent, a strict parent, a play-by-the-rules kind of guy; one who'se not allowed himself to open up much in the four years since his beloved ...

Rating of
2/4 

07/05/2008 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

Unexpected Delight

This was good. Many people stereotype Steve Carell as the goofball that can be seen in Anchorman, 40 Year Old Virgin, Get Smart, Evan Almighty, or The Office..But in Dan In Real Life Carell displays one of his most emotional performances. I rented this movies expecting to see a lot of goofball slapstick humor between Carell and Dane Cook, but what I actually got was a heart warming story about a man, a woman, and his family. Basically, Steve Carell is a widow who meets a woman that turns out to be his brother's girlfriend. Throughout the movie his feelings for her get stronger and its up to him whether to respect his family(brother) or to give in to his emotions. The movie contains excellent performances by Carell and Cook, and its also nice to see John Mahoney in his first film since the...

Rating of
3/4 

04/30/2008 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

Single Daddy Double-Feature (Part 2)

Within a couple of days last weekend, I unintentionally saw two different movies with the similar theme of a single father trying to recreate his life several years after his wife's death. Such a coincidence probably caused my to think more harshly about the first, "Smart People", and more favorably about the second, "Dan in Real Life".

I love the idea of a movie that mocks the self-obsessed, book-smart people who don't have an ounce of common sense. But "Smart People" has only one or two moments where the issue is brought to the forefront. For example, Sarah Jessica Parker M.D. says about her relationship with Dennis Quaid, "We're smart people; we'll figure it out." Either that wasn't really supposed to be the focus of the movie, or it was so poorly constructed that it took this s...

Rating of
3/4