Dan in Real Life

Release Date: October 26, 2007

Watch Date: January 22, 2025

“Steve Carell, a Hollywood’s leading funnyman, stars in the hilarious comedy that’s bursting with charm — a movie you’ll watch again and again. Advice columnist Dan Burns (Carell) is an expert on relationships, but somehow struggles to succeed as a brother, a son and a single parent to three precocious daughters. Things get even more complicated when Dan finds out that the woman he falls in love with is actually his brother’s new girlfriend. Carell is joined by a brilliant all-star supporting cast, including Juliette Binoche, Dane Cook, John Mahoney and Dianne Wiest, for a heartfelt, fun-filled comedy.”

---

   When I first went to go watch this film with my dad, who took me thinking that this film would a classic Carell comedy, a la Evan Almighty (which came out earlier that same year), I remember feeling a little disappointed. This film is super charming, super sweet, so relatable and just an all around feel good experience. But it’s also definitely a romantic date night. My dad and I love rom coms, and we still had a good time. But it didn’t actually meet my expectations.

   When I watched it last night, with Bob, in a pillow fort while we ate s’mores and drank hot chocolate, I definitely appreciated it a lot more. I think we captured the spirit of the film with a lot more accuracy.

   Is there an awkward thing about potentially cheating on your partner with his brother? Yep. And Bob is usually sensitive to those kinds of things, he does not like cheaters. But this film is charming enough that some how it didn’t bug him all that much? Maybe it’s because it’s made pretty clear that it’s a fairly new relationship – clearly new enough that Marie isn’t really expecting to meet her boyfriends entire family. Maybe because Marie and Mitch are clearly not the best fit. They have fun, but long term? Maybe not. Maybe because the chemistry between Dan and Marie is extremely obvious, even to Dan’s only family? I don’t know, but it was nice to have him not immediately hate the movie he picked based on the primary concept of the film.

   Well actually he picked it because he found out that Emily Blunt was in it, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him her role wasn’t as big as he was hoping it would be.

   Completely unrelated to the romance, I think Bob loved this film because of Dan’s relationship with daughters. I think he took some pointers on dealing with first boyfriends, and how to get rid of them – primarily. Our poor daughter has no chance. At least she’s got me advocating for her, but she’s also got extremely protective men in her life so we’ll see how that goes.

   If you’re looking for a really relaxing date night movie, especially one showing an idyllic extended family life, and showing a man who is grieving and moving through widowhood in an extremely healthy way, I would definitely recommend this film. But don’t go in expecting Anchorman or Evan Almighty. But that’s the beauty of Steve Carell, he really does have range – though if you watched enough of The Office you might not think it. If you’ve never seen a Steve Carell movie before, and have only seen him in The Office, prepare to be surprised.