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Summary:
A popular online advice columnist is a widower with three daughters. While spending a long weekend at his parent's house with the rest of his family, he meets a charming woman at a book store. It's an immediate attraction. It's not an hour later that he finds out she's dating his brother. During this time with his daughters and family, he must start to take heed to the advice he gives to others and set things right in his own life.

Review:
I don't have a particular dislike for "feel good" movies. My biggest wish with these kinds of flicks is that once the end credits roll, I don't feel like the hunky dory-ness of it all is forced. Dan in Real Life made a complicated series of events get wrapped up into a neat little package with a bouquet of flowers, and a pretty little bow on top. I myself did NOT get the sense of completion and happiness that this movie wanted to provide. The final note of Dan fell flat, and was oversimplified to keep the audience from having to face bitterness.
Some times life forces you to swallow a horse pill dry to help alleviate the pain of past mistakes. In this movie's case, just a small fraction of sadness or disagreement between family members at the end would make sense. Even if they gave the impression that in the near future things could be smoothed out, I would not complain that much.

Steve Carrell was great as Dan, and I could sympathize with the guy on many different levels. I also liked the concept of him accidentally falling for his brother's lover without even realizing it. It barely worked well enough for me to accept it. What mystifies me is how he could be telling her his life story, and she never catches on that he's her boyfriend's BROTHER. Did he not tell her beforehand ANYTHING about Dan? It's a little ridiculous, really. Then there's Dan's 14 year old daughter with raging hormones that screams and yells and bitches and whines constantly about "true love". His oldest daughter wants to drive, but Dan's too nervous to let her. Something tells me that these themes are going to become vital at the end. As if they are setups for a final scene in which the daughters and father work together past their differences for a better good. I sometimes wish that set ups like this would be less obvious.

There are a number of obligatory scenes in which the entire family is all smiles and happiness. They do calisthenics in the morning. They have a talent show in which the whole family does Stupid Human Tricks. Let's all smile and laugh with this happy family, shall we? BARF! Then there's a scene where Dan tries to sneak in a private conversation with Marie while she's in the bathroom, and then Dan's daughter walks in, so he (yawn) hides in the shower stall. Dan's daughter wants to make a conversation with Marie even though she's about to take a shower. So she turns the water on in the shower while Dan is standing in it. Funny, huh? But it gets better. She keeps talking to Marie, and Marie pretends she's going to take a shower but forgets to take her clothes off. It's weird enough that Marie would be willing to get naked and take a shower while she's giving advice to a 16 year old she barely even knows. Why not turn off the damned water and take her in the bedroom to talk? Instead, she takes her clothes off and stands naked in the shower while Dan is clothed. This make no fucking sense to me at ALL. This is an example of when a movie is reaching for comedy and an awkward moment.
Dane Cook was OK as Dan's brother Mitch. He seems to have finally found true love and someone who he can be attached to more than just superficially. Dan refers to his past flings in a moment of jealous weakness. Marie is just so wonderful that I guess Mitch finally HAS found his one true love. This makes things harder on Dan. All the way to the end, I keep asking myself how such a mess can be fixed enough to keep this from being a tragedy. Finally, the scene in the bowling alley is where Dan in Real Life had truly Jumped the Shark. It gets worse as the last fifteen minutes tick by. The bowling alley was bad enough, because I really didn't get how the sequence of events could have been timed so properly. But then, everything else around Dan is falling apart at the same time. It's too bad.
Don't worry, though. It's not one minute after the worst of it has come to pass that the most insanely far out and retarded moment occurs between Mitch and Dan. Dan says "Hold that thought", and my respect for this movie went from Barely Acceptin' This to "SCREW THIS NOISE"! I don't want to spoil the ending, but it's the ending in which the worst of the worst of this movie's moments comes to a head.

Instead of Dan in Real Life making me feel good, I ended up feeling really really bad. Reason being that my intelligence was insulted, and any kind of concerns I had for Dan at any point during the movie get canceled out and nullified in the end. There was so much set up for disaster in one area or another of Dan's life, that the super-duper "life is perfect" overly happy ending was a cop-out of the first degree. I hate that I had any kind of sympathy or concern for Dan because the movie refused to allow the audience to leave with even a hint of sadness, when it would have benefited the story to do so.

GRADE: C-

Reviewed 11/1/07