+ 2nd Worst Movie of the Year
+ Most Tasteless Movie of the Year + Most Undeserved Hit of the Year
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| Steve Carell resting on pancakes for a poster for Peter Hedges' Dan in Real Life |
For the love of God, avoid this movie! Don't watch it!
Dan in Real Life is one of the most aggravating, insultingly bad movies I have ever seen.
Dan is a widower with three daughters, and he is a family column writer, (we gather by and by in the course of the film), who has to take them to a small, Rhode Island cabin, where all of their enormous family gathers yearly to spend inordinate amounts of time together. But Dan falls inexplicably in love with his brother's girlfriend, and here we go.
I was lured to the film as it is a comedy with Steve Carell (The Office (2005-13), but boy was I disappointed. Even Carell's other really bad movie Evan Almighty (2007)) seems Oscar-worthy compared to Dan.
You can tell just ten minutes into the film that it sucks and will suck to the end, and largely it is due to a terrible script, devised by director Peter Hedges (The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012)) and Pierre Gardner (Lost Souls (2000)). There's no smartness or surprises or actually funny scenes in Dan, just clichés upon clichés and a really messed up ideal of family life.
This ideal is shown in the cabin-part of the movie, which is almost the entire film, in which the weird family is crammed together in the house to spend time together, playing football, dancing, singing songs for each other and eating and cooking. It is definitely thought of as a wholesome, close family by the writers, but they come off totally the opposite:
Especially Dan's retarded brother played by awful Dane Cook (My Best Friend's Girl (2008)) is odd and obsessed with showing and talking about his literally incredible love for his girlfriend.
One climax in the family's sick activities comes, when, after two or three days together, they pamper Dan with advice on his love life, which they all apparently need to attend to and save, (without much objection from Dan), and they set up a date for him with a woman they know from his childhood, presumably, whom they all refer to as 'pig-face'. They then go on to demean Dan with a happy-go-lucky song, - piano, patriarch, kids-and-all included, - about 'pig-face Ruth'. Bear in mind that this isn't served with any dark-humoured sarchasm, but as straight-up romcom, normal family behavior.
Juliette Binoche (Three Colours: Blue (1993)) plays the oh-so-lovely infatuation, - with an unexplained, heavy French accent, - and I lost much for her by seeing her through Dan. In some shots, it seems you can actually see her suffering as well:
While Binoche loses integrity, Carell can live on professionally, in my mind, because he has done good work since. (But, dang, I will still never forget him in this pile of crap.)
Steve Carell, despicable you for acting in this poor, poor movie. It hurt to watch you in it:
The details:
Two more normally good actors are trapped in the painful-to-watch bee-hive that is Dan in Real Life: Dianne Wiest (Edward Scissorhands (1990)) and John Mahoney (Frasier (1993-04)). Wiest plays the naggy mother-'character', while Mahoney mostly stands around putting his hands down into different jars and/or looks close to dying:
Many times I wished that all the other characters would just vanish, and the rest of the film would only be about John Mahoney. Needless to say, that never happened.
Instead you go through the film wondering who is who in the ever-enlarging, face-less crowd of a family that walk around the background.
Dan also, of course, has a sappy, sentimental ending, acoustic guitar to tap into an indie-feel-audience in an awful singing scene with Cook and Carell and endless shots in a bowling alley romance. And a completely unbelievable job interview-scene that also somehow involves Dan's hellish family. And Carell - once again - playing a 'good' dad, who is a total Nazi to his almost grown daughter, whom he doesn't allow having an innocent romance with the sweetest kid, you have probably ever seen. This boy, played by Felipe Dieppa (The Great Fight (2011) is probably the best thing in the film.
Dan in Real Life talks down to you from a vantage point of zero intelligence or originality.
The only reason it still gets a single heart here, is because it is not 100 % technically inept, (light, sound and photography is mostly ok), while the story, however, is simply beyond awful.
We can look forward to seeing Carell soon in a comedy that I think is going to be a lot better than Dan in Real Life: Miguel Arteta's (Youth in Revolt (2009)) lengthily, but funnily titled Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014)
Related posts:
The 2000s in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
2007 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2007 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Budget: 25 mil. $
Box office: 68.3 mil. $
= Big hit
What do you think of Dan in Real Life?
Other examples of critical and commercial successes, which are absolutely awful films?
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