The Unseen Movie Review: Dan in Real Life

By Robert Dixter Oct 26, 2007, 9:38 GMT

The film casts Carell as widowed father with three daughters who meets a woman while on vacation at the Jersey shore. The catch is that on returning home, he finds out that she’s dating his brother. Rather than hitting the singles bars and moving on to someone else, he hangs around trying desperately not to fall in love with her. ...more

Is there a movie Steve Carell can say no to?  I hear he’s even campaigning for the Wonder Woman role in George Miller’s new Justice League film.  He signs on the dotted line faster than Donald Trump whips out a pre-nup for his fiancées.  Can you really blame him? 

There are two things they say about Hollywood.  1) You need to get while the getting is good and 2) Don’t sleep with Renee Zellweger if you can avoid it.  So Steve I applaud your greediness.  You were a struggling comic actor for quite some time.  You put in your time on cable television.  You played second fiddle to bigger comic names (and showed them up in Anchorman).  And now you have house payments you need to make and your thirty year old daughter could use some overdue braces.  That’s cool.  The only thing is if you’re going to cash in you should sign on for big budget blockbusters, like Evan Almighty (proof that if a studio gets behind a summer movie they can literally will it to cross the $100 million mark). 

Your new movie Dan in Real Life doesn’t seem like a big payday, but I could be wrong.  I’m sure you made enough on next summer’s Get Smart to keep your wife in botox for years to come.

I’ve seen the trailer for Dan in Real Life and it made me feel all warm inside like I drank hot chocolate too fast, but I never really laughed out loud.  Are the same people who saw 40 Year Old Virgin going to show up for a feel good film about stealing your brother’s girlfriend? 

The brother is played by Dane Cook and the girlfriend is played by Juliette Binoche.  Why do they need a French actress to play the girlfriend?  Juliette seems so miscast in this film.  It’s almost like she asked directions to the latest Roman Polanski movie and the production assistant sent her to Dan in Real Life by mistake and instead of complaining about it everyone just worked with her because they didn’t want to piss off the French. 

Dane Cook makes sense as Steve’s brother but I might be the only person in America who doesn’t think this guy is funny.  He seems like he’s trying too hard to be funny.  Maybe his parents didn’t love him enough growing up or maybe he was the odd man out in high school and ended up going to the prom with his cousin who later would have a sex change because she really liked to play rugby.  Who knows?  I know Dane is a big internet sensation and has amassed more friends on MySpace than Jenna Jameson and Ted Kaczynski combined.

But my real problem is the idea of paying for Steve Carell.  Why do I need to shell out $50 including babysitter and popcorn to see a guy that I watch every week for free on TV?  The real problem is that The Office is a very funny show.  It makes me laugh harder than most movies I pay for.  I guess that’s the trick for TV actors.  How do they convince people that now it’s time to pay for the entertainment they’ve been getting for free? 

Especially in the case of Steve Carell who is very funny on television and has said he has no intention of leaving the show because you never know where that next paycheck is coming from in his business. Kind of like a Lindsay Lohan rear ender.  Which brings us back to Steve being unable to turn down money (rightfully so).