“Today, I want to talk to you about the subject of plans. Life plans. How we all make them. And how we all hope that our kids make good, smart, safe plans of their own. But if we’re really honest with ourselves, most of the times our plans don’t work out as we’d hoped. So instead of asking our young people: What are your plans? What do you want to do with your life? Maybe we should tell them this: plan to be surprised."
‘Dan in real life’ is a cool, unpretentious movie that offers a fresh take on some of the complexities of life: its miseries, its greatnesses and its many unavoidable contradictions. A responsible, puritan widowed father of three girls who frequently criticizes his daughters falling in love too hastily loses his head for his brother’s girlfriend during a family reunion. Chaos ensues. Steve Carell, who plays the leading role, is quickly becoming my favorite comedy actor thanks to his performance in titles like this, 'The 40 year old virgin’, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ and, of course, ‘The Office’ (which has actually earned him a Golden Globe and a couple of Emmy nominations). Anyway, I watched this movie recently and liked it quite a lot. It is probably not a timeless masterpiece that you will remember for the rest of your life, but hey… it is very enjoyable and it shows that comedies need not be stupid to make you laugh.
Interestingly enough, very few times has a movie provided such an accurate review of itself as a part of its own script:
“I’m looking for a book, obviously. Something that can help me deal with what might be an awkward situation. Something funny might be nice. But not necessarily big “ha ha ha”, laugh-out-loud funny, you know, and certainly not make-fun-of-other-people funny, but rather something, uh, human funny. And if it could sneak up on you, surprise you, and at the same time make you think that what you thought was not only right in a wrong kind of way, but when you’re wrong there is a certain rightness to your wrongness. Well, maybe what I mean is, um, more importantly, I’m looking to be swept up. And at the same time not. Meaning I wanna feel, uh, a deep connection to something… Or maybe I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
