It’s a Friday night at 6PM, you have work in the morning and your friends are all out drinking at the club. They asked you to come out but you’re simply too tired, don’t want to spend any money and don’t feel like dressing up. It’s a Friday night at 6PM and you just want an easy night, so you browse the streaming services for comedy films. Something relaxing that’s not filled with minute, minuscule details you need to focus on to grasp the full understanding of some deeper layer of fiction, something nice and relaxing, that you can laugh at a little and view the characters as someone you can easily bump into on the street. Go onto Stan and have a look at ‘Dan in Real Life’.
Steve Carell plays Dan, a life advice columnist writing for a small newspaper who finds himself unable to be happy in any way since his wife passed and is obviously living through his daughters, keeping Cara away from the boy she’s in love with and refusing to let his oldest, Jane, learn to drive and be crashed into by alcoholics and reckless drivers. When he isn’t making his two older daughter’s lives a living hell and “murdering love” he’s neglecting his third and youngest daughter, Lilly. This is all exposed for everyone to see when he meets a mysterious woman in a bookstore and spends the afternoon in long conversation about his own life instead of interacting with his extended family at their yearly gathering, because of course, he’s always going to see them next year anyway.
The pin drops, however, when Dan finds that the woman, he had met in the bookstore is none other than his future sister-in-law, Marie, the apple of his brother’s eye. Cue the awkward over-fixation on how to completely ignore each other and pretend their feelings aren’t real even after they’ve known each other only 12 hours. This means the rest of the movie is dedicated to witnessing how much of a terrible human being Dan is — jealously trying to sabotage his brother’s relationship and telling Marie just how terrible she is, because, apparently, that’s how you ignore someone.
Steve Carell’s performance as an everyman character is untouchable as always, perhaps rivaling Jack Lemmon’s career. There is a part of Dan we can all find relatable in some way, maybe you’ve dropped some unpleasant words at a family dinner, maybe you’ve spied on people, maybe you’ve fallen off a roof at some point in your life, but this relatability does not stop us from growing a hatred Dan, along with every other character.
The supporting cast is filled with absolute powerhouses that make you wonder, “WHY THE HELL ARE YOU HERE?” Playing Marie is Juliette Binoche, taking time away from starring in arthouse films such as the ‘Three Colours Trilogy’ and ‘Elles’ to portray, quite underwhelming at that, a woman caught in a love triangle, but to be fair, the writers don’t use Marie for many comedic scenes other than intentionally burning Dan’s pancake to crisp. John Mahoney plays Dan’s father and nails it, perfectly balancing the stern, “tell it to you like it is” authoritarian and the “loved you since you first came into the world” pacifist that we all wish we had for a father. Emily Blunt makes an unexpected appearance as Ruthie Draper, a woman from high school that Dan is set up with, and refreshingly makes a more scandalous and flirtatious performance in only two scenes. Those two scenes are very well spent, though, burning the dance floor up with Dan. Dane Cook makes an appearance as Dan’s brother and romantic rival, Mitch, taking a much more relaxed approach from his roles in such films as ‘Good Luck Chuck’ and ‘Waiting’. Surprisingly, he makes a convincing portrayal of a man looking for the love of his life and perfectly contrasts Dan, I was absolutely rooting for Dan to fail and Mitch to get his fairy-tale ending.
But he didn’t get his fairy-tale ending. In fact, he got an ending that was even more out of left field than ‘Sleepless in Seattle’. Just when everyone sees Dan for the woman-stealing fool he is, every character automatically acknowledges that just because Dan has only been in a relationship with one woman, he still deserves Marie. But don’t feel too bad for Mitch, he’ll enjoy himself with Ruthie. Surely Mitch is the true hero of the story? This man gets his heart broken by his fiancé and brother and still comes out on top scoring a date with Emily Blunt!
Did I like the film? Yes. This is very much a breath-of-air film, where, in a world of blockbuster franchises like the MCU where you need to carefully examine each frame in order to know the next 10-year journey of the characters, you can just relax and watch as someone else messes their relationships up, which, you cannot deny, we all need to see in films now and then. We all need to see someone else crash and burn to forget about our own lives, we all need to see someone else have challenges to trudge through. Plus, if you ever wanted to see Steve Carell get punched in the mouth, this film has got you covered.
‘Dan In Real Life’ is currently streaming right now on Stan.
Photo: Merrie W. Wallace/Touchstone Pictures