Dan In Real Life

Dan In Real Life is a saccharine tinged tale which features Steve Carrell, presumably awash in the praise that greeted him for his turn in Little Miss Sunshine, playing a down-trodden widower.

Carrell is balancing his responsibilities to his three daughters with the bittersweet pain of finally finding love for the first time since his wife's death. The trouble in paradise is that his bookish muse (Juliette Binoche) just happens to be dating his brother.

The film itself focuses subsequently on an extended holiday where all of Dan's family besiege him whilst they all visit their patriarchs (an entertaining John Mahoney and a spiky Dianne Wiest) and much predictability abounds. The tip of the cap that I'll give Dan In Real Life is that it revels in the mundane and ordinary; often eschewing such typical fish-out-water knockabout comedy by instead crafting laughs rather than bludgeoning the audience with them, though the central conceit that Binoche could be attracted to both Carrell and his brother (the under-used Dane Cook) stretches such earned credibility.

There are positives: the soundtrack from Sondre Lerche and guest musicians such as Regina Spektor is refreshing, and Emily Blunt turns in an entertaining cameo. Hopefully she won't be forever relegated to such brief blink and you'll miss them moments as she demonstrates here and in Charlie Wilson's War. Entertaining, though sleight, Dan In Real Life never meets the heavyweight comedy-drama tag that it so yearns for, but passes the time albeit in a maudlin and melancholy way.

Extras: Commentary by Director and Writer, Just Like Family: The Making of Dan in Real Life, Handmade Music: Creating the Score Featurette, Deleted Scenes, Outtakes.

Released 9th June 2008 by Icon Entertainment.

Written by Simon Cole.