Word: dans
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...fiercely communal and insanely competitive. They make the Kennedys seem sluggish. They do aerobics and play touch football on the front lawn. When they're not engaged in Scrabble or an improvised singalong, they break up into speed-solving crossword teams. Come evening, there's a family talent show. Dan and Mitch duet on Pete Townshend's "My Love Opened the Door" (as if that perky tune hadn't been worn out in a half-dozen movies and commercials for J.C. Penney and NBC). And the children, I'm not kidding, give mime performances. In Wedding Crashers and other movies...
...Marie and Dan hit it off and go for coffee, where she falls further in love - at least in like - with him. Now, everybody knows that Steve Carell is lovable. On The Daily Show he was the effortlessly genial (and, by the end of each segment, desperate) Produce Pete. He bore up manfully to all manner of insults in The 40 Year Old Virgin and Evan Almighty; he even lends a certain besieged menschiness to the role of the boss in The Office. But Hedges thinks the audience needs its subjective Carell-atives reinforced, so as Dan woos Marie with...
...From the start, director Peter Hedges cues Dan's mellow, mildly rueful tone. We hear the sensitive strumming of an acoustic guitar; we see Dan seen doing his kids' laundry and getting little credit from them for being a full-time dad; and at the bookstore, Marie says that what she's looking for is "something funny, but not big ha-ha-ha laughter...something human and funny that could sneak up and surprise you." It could be a recipe for the old-fashioned or chick comedy, and a template for Dan in Real Life...
...they treat Dan as the runt of the litter? They must think he loves washing his kids' clothes at home, because when he visits his parents they make him sleep in the laundry room. In any matter relating to Dan's rebellious daughters, the family reflexively takes the girls' side over their dad's. His own father (John Mahoney) treats him with the bluff bonhomie of men who wouldn't be caught dead in an intimate discussion. And Dan's mom (Dianne Wiest), it's clear, has been nagging him all his life. "Get lost for a while," she tells...
...effects of the rowdy, guy-centric Judd Apatow movies is that, by establishing new rules for movie comedy, they've make milder romantic ones seem like relics from the 1950s. The Hedges film has antique contrivances aplenty, from a scene where Marie must enter a shower with Dan already hiding inside, to an job interview Dan has, which takes place, with infuriating improbability, at the family home with his parents present. There's also the sitcom omniscience of his daughters, who are exasperated by his paternal protectiveness. "You're a good father," his youngest tells him, "but sometimes...