Some dude went to an early screening and posted a thread over at IMDb entitled "WARNING: This Movie is a Chick Flick!" Taken to task by other posters for his narrow view of film, he responded with a post that is both an instant classic of unintentional self-parody and an indication of why movies with strong female characters are practically non-existent anymore (and, thus, why Juliette Binoche isn't even mentioned in the promotion for the film):
"1. There were more pregnant women in the theater than at a lamaze class. Seriously, there were 250 seats and 375 individuals there (get it? I'm counting the fetus's - or fetues - whatever the plural form is)
2. The previews before the movie started were Fred Claus, Bee Movie and ENCHANTED. Try showing an Enchanted preview before the Departed or American Gangster. Obviously the previews were targeted at women (ie enchanted) and pregnant moms - possibly w/ little kids (ie Bee Movie).
3. Before the movie started the ushers came in and asked everybody to move toward the middle of the rows to open up seats. Do you think that the ushers would walk into a Departed or Fight Club movie theater and ask the people to move closer to each other? No. It's an official rule for guys that an empty seat be between each guy, unless the party is over 4 or more members."
Edited By Penelope on 1193276980
Dan in Real Life - You wanted a late contender, didn't you?
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Big Magilla
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Good point, Penelope. This is not being marketed as a film in which screen legend Binoche is one of its stars. It is being marketed to the TV audience of Carell's The Office.
I was shocked in reading the reviews to find Binoche was not only in it, but one of the film's two stars.
I thought Pieces of April was oversold. It was kind of charming in its quirky way, but I definitely preferred Patricia Clarkson in The Station Agent to her one-note daffy mother in Pieces that year. Too bad her handlers were over-reaching by promoting her for both best actress in Station and supporting in Pieces because she should have nominated for teh classier Station in support in my opinion.
I was shocked in reading the reviews to find Binoche was not only in it, but one of the film's two stars.
I thought Pieces of April was oversold. It was kind of charming in its quirky way, but I definitely preferred Patricia Clarkson in The Station Agent to her one-note daffy mother in Pieces that year. Too bad her handlers were over-reaching by promoting her for both best actress in Station and supporting in Pieces because she should have nominated for teh classier Station in support in my opinion.
Based on the ads I'd seen on TV, I thought Dan in Real Life was one of those sentimental, mushy family comedies--I didn't even know Juliette Binoche was in it until yesterday!
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
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OscarGuy
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I thought Pieces of April was a very charming and endearing film. It may not have been the height of auteurist cinema, but it was a good movie and no one was more sublime that year than Patricia Clarkson.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
Yeah, I stopped reading the review as soon as it mentioned "Pieces of April" and "promise" in the same sentence.dws1982 wrote:Sonic Youth wrote:Pic more than fulfills the promise evidenced in "Pieces of April,"
AKA one of the worst movies of 2003.
And Juliette Binoche has an interesting career. She goes from a Hou Hsiao-Hsien film to this and from this to Olivier Assayas and then to Kiarostami. And then she goes back mainstream for a Richard Eyre film.
--Sonic Youth wrote:Pic more than fulfills the promise evidenced in "Pieces of April,"
AKA one of the worst movies of 2003.
And Juliette Binoche has an interesting career. She goes from a Hou Hsiao-Hsien film to this and from this to Olivier Assayas and then to Kiarostami. And then she goes back mainstream for a Richard Eyre film.
Edited By dws1982 on 1249913929
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Sonic Youth
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The trailers for this movie almost made me vomit. "Wow, Carrell really sold out," I whispered to my wife. And yet, look at these preliminary reviews.
Keep an eye out for this. It may be too light to make an impact. Or, it may be the next "Little Miss Sunshine" which I know you've all been praying for.
Variety:
Gracefully understated and thoroughly engaging, "Dan in Real Life" deftly interlaces heart and humor in a witty, warm and well-observed comedy about the unexpected and inconvenient blooming of romance at the weekend gathering of an extended family. Pic more than fulfills the promise evidenced in "Pieces of April," the 2003 directorial debut of playwright-novelist-scriptwriter Peter Hedges ("About a Boy," "What's Eating Gilbert Grape"). From a B.O. perspective, his follow-up has the potential to delight a demographically diverse audience, and generate enough favorable word of mouth to register as one of the fall's true sleepers.
It's intended as high praise to note that, in sharp contrast to most other recent American-made laffers, there's a decidedly European air to Hedges' effort. Indeed, it's not at all difficult to imagine, say, Daniel Auteuil in the lead role winningly played here by Steve Carell.
Carell hits all the right notes while running the gamut from propriety to spontaneity as Dan Burns, writer of a newspaper column that gives the pic its title. In his column, Dan confidently dispenses advice to readers with burning questions about love, life and family matters. In his own life, however, Dan is uptight and overprotective as the widowed father of three young daughters: teenage Jane (Alison Pill), who's seldom allowed to use her new driver's license; middle child Cara (Brittany Robertson), who's much too young in Dan's view to have a boyfriend, much less an ardent suitor; and fourth-grader Lilly (Marlene Lawston), who's forgiving, but not entirely uncritical, of her father's way-uncool attitude.
Dan and his daughters aren't exactly bonding blissfully when they arrive at his parents' Rhode Island beach house for a semi-annual gathering of brothers and sisters, spouses and offspring. Dan's mother (Dianne Wiest) quickly realizes it might be good to separate father and daughters for a bit. So she sends Dan off to buy newspapers in a nearby town -- where, at a second-hand bookstore, he meets Maria (Juliette Binoche), who gets him to open up.
Here and elsewhere in "Dan in Real Life," Hedges and co-scripter Pierce Gardner demonstrate a beguiling ability to take intriguing detours while covering familiar territory. Dan and Marie "meet cute," of course. But their opening conversational gambits, involving recommended reading material, come off as fresh and funny.
The budding attraction is interrupted by a major complication: Marie turns out to be the visiting fiancee of Mitch (Dane Cook), Dan's fitness-instructor brother. Yet instead of generating elaborate deceptions, slapstick farce and other broadly comic antics, this plot device leads to richly amusing incidents of anxiety, indecision and embarrassment, as Marie and Dan try to hide their mutual attraction -- and deny it to themselves and each other -- while unavoidably close in a crowded house.
"Dan in Real Life" leans toward the obvious only when Dan is pushed by his mother into a blind date with a former classmate (Emily Blunt), a stunning sexpot who arouses Marie's barely contained jealousy. It's not that Blunt goes over the top -- she stops short of that. But when she and Carell have a kind of dance-floor duel with Binoche and Cooke, the scene, while undeniably funny, seems oddly odd of sync with the rest of the pic. (Moreover, the film isn't the rollicking laff-riot it's being be sold as in coming-attraction trailers that could turn off many of the very ticketbuyers who may enjoy it most.)
"Dan" works best when the humor flows directly from the basic set-up and the interacting central characters. Binoche is charming throughout -- her accent is attributed to her character's many and varied travels -- but she's most endearing when Marie and Dan are sharing their own private jokes about their complicated situation.
Supporting performances are aces across the board. If Dane Cook merits specific mention, it's because his fine work here (much like his under-rated turn in "Mr. Brooks") suggests he could be at the start of interesting film-acting career marked by the smart balancing of lead and supporting roles.
Tech package impresses without undue slickness. Sarah Knowles' production design is precise and evocative, right down to the look of the laundry room at the beach house, and the tattered copy of Arthur Knight's "The Liveliest Art" displayed at the second-hand bookstore. Original tunes composed and performed by Sondre Lerche are expressively melodic pop ditties bound to boost the soundtrack's CD sales. Here, too, pic avoids the expected: The usual string of Top 40 standards and currently charting notables is conspicuous by its absence.
----------------------------------------------
Kirk Honeycutt
Oct 22, 2007
Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche have comic roles that fit them like designer threads.
Peter Hedges has snuck up on us. He is no newcomer to film comedy. At age 45, he has written the novel and screenplay for the offbeat, felicitous "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," penned the screenplay for the sharply observed comic drama "About a Boy," wrote and directed the wonderfully dysfunctional Thanksgiving comedy "Pieces of April" and now has co-written and directed "Dan in Real Life."
This latter film, among many other fine things, provides Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche with comic roles that fit them like designer threads. While not a perfect comedy, "Dan" is certainly a crowd-pleasing, cleverly engineered and well-executed divertissement that should put grins on the faces of movie fans of many ages and execs at Disney and Focus Features.
Hedges' focus, at least up to this point, is the family. He also likes to deploy multiple stories that give you a big, chaotic mess within which smaller, intimate moments of tenderness or romance can exist. Here he brings together a large, boisterous family for an annual fall weekend in Rhode Island.
Dan (Carell) writes a family-advice column, Dan in Real Life. He is a widowed father of three girls, two of which are teens, meaning Dad is the last person you would go to for advice.
So he brings to this gathering mostly cranky daughters: Jane (Alison Pill), who wants to use her new driver's license and to be treated like an adult; Cara (Brittany Robertson), who believes she is the first person in the world to discover love; and 8-year-old Lilly (Marlene Lawston), who is smarter than Dan can possibly realize.
Longtime playboy brother Mitch (stand-up comic Dane Cook) means to introduce his family to his new squeeze, but before he can do so Dan unwittingly makes her acquaintance in a bookstore. He falls head over heels for Marie (Binoche) without realizing that she is his brother's new girlfriend. The sequence plays a little too meet cute but nonetheless features charming acting by Carell and Binoche. This predicament sets up any number of comically awkward situations in a huge, multibedroom seaside house belonging to Mom and Dad (veterans John Mahoney and Dianne Wiest, who cagily play things straight).
What Hedges does here so brilliantly is allow us to see two people fall madly in love in a situation where no one else can be aware of their passion. Eye contact and tugs at the mouth from Carell and Binoche do the trick very nicely, while the animated clan provides an engaging backdrop of familial love, thwarted though intense feelings -- that would be Cara -- longings for recognition -- that would be Jane -- and wounded behavior by the entire group once they realize Dan's deception. There also is a priceless drop-by appearance by beauteous Emily Blunt, who is becoming the queen of comic supporting roles.
The third act is a disappointment. It feels labored and unconvincing in its attempt to wrap up a convoluted situation that the Greeks would have handled with a god descending from the heavens to sort it all out.
No matter. Getting there was all the fun.
Keep an eye out for this. It may be too light to make an impact. Or, it may be the next "Little Miss Sunshine" which I know you've all been praying for.
Variety:
Gracefully understated and thoroughly engaging, "Dan in Real Life" deftly interlaces heart and humor in a witty, warm and well-observed comedy about the unexpected and inconvenient blooming of romance at the weekend gathering of an extended family. Pic more than fulfills the promise evidenced in "Pieces of April," the 2003 directorial debut of playwright-novelist-scriptwriter Peter Hedges ("About a Boy," "What's Eating Gilbert Grape"). From a B.O. perspective, his follow-up has the potential to delight a demographically diverse audience, and generate enough favorable word of mouth to register as one of the fall's true sleepers.
It's intended as high praise to note that, in sharp contrast to most other recent American-made laffers, there's a decidedly European air to Hedges' effort. Indeed, it's not at all difficult to imagine, say, Daniel Auteuil in the lead role winningly played here by Steve Carell.
Carell hits all the right notes while running the gamut from propriety to spontaneity as Dan Burns, writer of a newspaper column that gives the pic its title. In his column, Dan confidently dispenses advice to readers with burning questions about love, life and family matters. In his own life, however, Dan is uptight and overprotective as the widowed father of three young daughters: teenage Jane (Alison Pill), who's seldom allowed to use her new driver's license; middle child Cara (Brittany Robertson), who's much too young in Dan's view to have a boyfriend, much less an ardent suitor; and fourth-grader Lilly (Marlene Lawston), who's forgiving, but not entirely uncritical, of her father's way-uncool attitude.
Dan and his daughters aren't exactly bonding blissfully when they arrive at his parents' Rhode Island beach house for a semi-annual gathering of brothers and sisters, spouses and offspring. Dan's mother (Dianne Wiest) quickly realizes it might be good to separate father and daughters for a bit. So she sends Dan off to buy newspapers in a nearby town -- where, at a second-hand bookstore, he meets Maria (Juliette Binoche), who gets him to open up.
Here and elsewhere in "Dan in Real Life," Hedges and co-scripter Pierce Gardner demonstrate a beguiling ability to take intriguing detours while covering familiar territory. Dan and Marie "meet cute," of course. But their opening conversational gambits, involving recommended reading material, come off as fresh and funny.
The budding attraction is interrupted by a major complication: Marie turns out to be the visiting fiancee of Mitch (Dane Cook), Dan's fitness-instructor brother. Yet instead of generating elaborate deceptions, slapstick farce and other broadly comic antics, this plot device leads to richly amusing incidents of anxiety, indecision and embarrassment, as Marie and Dan try to hide their mutual attraction -- and deny it to themselves and each other -- while unavoidably close in a crowded house.
"Dan in Real Life" leans toward the obvious only when Dan is pushed by his mother into a blind date with a former classmate (Emily Blunt), a stunning sexpot who arouses Marie's barely contained jealousy. It's not that Blunt goes over the top -- she stops short of that. But when she and Carell have a kind of dance-floor duel with Binoche and Cooke, the scene, while undeniably funny, seems oddly odd of sync with the rest of the pic. (Moreover, the film isn't the rollicking laff-riot it's being be sold as in coming-attraction trailers that could turn off many of the very ticketbuyers who may enjoy it most.)
"Dan" works best when the humor flows directly from the basic set-up and the interacting central characters. Binoche is charming throughout -- her accent is attributed to her character's many and varied travels -- but she's most endearing when Marie and Dan are sharing their own private jokes about their complicated situation.
Supporting performances are aces across the board. If Dane Cook merits specific mention, it's because his fine work here (much like his under-rated turn in "Mr. Brooks") suggests he could be at the start of interesting film-acting career marked by the smart balancing of lead and supporting roles.
Tech package impresses without undue slickness. Sarah Knowles' production design is precise and evocative, right down to the look of the laundry room at the beach house, and the tattered copy of Arthur Knight's "The Liveliest Art" displayed at the second-hand bookstore. Original tunes composed and performed by Sondre Lerche are expressively melodic pop ditties bound to boost the soundtrack's CD sales. Here, too, pic avoids the expected: The usual string of Top 40 standards and currently charting notables is conspicuous by its absence.
----------------------------------------------
Kirk Honeycutt
Oct 22, 2007
Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche have comic roles that fit them like designer threads.
Peter Hedges has snuck up on us. He is no newcomer to film comedy. At age 45, he has written the novel and screenplay for the offbeat, felicitous "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," penned the screenplay for the sharply observed comic drama "About a Boy," wrote and directed the wonderfully dysfunctional Thanksgiving comedy "Pieces of April" and now has co-written and directed "Dan in Real Life."
This latter film, among many other fine things, provides Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche with comic roles that fit them like designer threads. While not a perfect comedy, "Dan" is certainly a crowd-pleasing, cleverly engineered and well-executed divertissement that should put grins on the faces of movie fans of many ages and execs at Disney and Focus Features.
Hedges' focus, at least up to this point, is the family. He also likes to deploy multiple stories that give you a big, chaotic mess within which smaller, intimate moments of tenderness or romance can exist. Here he brings together a large, boisterous family for an annual fall weekend in Rhode Island.
Dan (Carell) writes a family-advice column, Dan in Real Life. He is a widowed father of three girls, two of which are teens, meaning Dad is the last person you would go to for advice.
So he brings to this gathering mostly cranky daughters: Jane (Alison Pill), who wants to use her new driver's license and to be treated like an adult; Cara (Brittany Robertson), who believes she is the first person in the world to discover love; and 8-year-old Lilly (Marlene Lawston), who is smarter than Dan can possibly realize.
Longtime playboy brother Mitch (stand-up comic Dane Cook) means to introduce his family to his new squeeze, but before he can do so Dan unwittingly makes her acquaintance in a bookstore. He falls head over heels for Marie (Binoche) without realizing that she is his brother's new girlfriend. The sequence plays a little too meet cute but nonetheless features charming acting by Carell and Binoche. This predicament sets up any number of comically awkward situations in a huge, multibedroom seaside house belonging to Mom and Dad (veterans John Mahoney and Dianne Wiest, who cagily play things straight).
What Hedges does here so brilliantly is allow us to see two people fall madly in love in a situation where no one else can be aware of their passion. Eye contact and tugs at the mouth from Carell and Binoche do the trick very nicely, while the animated clan provides an engaging backdrop of familial love, thwarted though intense feelings -- that would be Cara -- longings for recognition -- that would be Jane -- and wounded behavior by the entire group once they realize Dan's deception. There also is a priceless drop-by appearance by beauteous Emily Blunt, who is becoming the queen of comic supporting roles.
The third act is a disappointment. It feels labored and unconvincing in its attempt to wrap up a convoluted situation that the Greeks would have handled with a god descending from the heavens to sort it all out.
No matter. Getting there was all the fun.
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler