‘DAN in Real Life” is the anti-Ben Stiller comedy: There’s humiliation aplenty but no mugging, no abuse to the crotch region, no straining to be outrageous. One character says she’s looking for something “not necessarily hahaha laugh-out-loud funny, something human funny,” and that’s what we get.
The title is the name of an advice column written by a widowed dad (Steve Carell) with three hip daughters who goes to an autumn family gathering at a Rhode Island cabin. The widowed dad thing has been beaten into the grave (next week brings a John Cusack movie along the same lines), and so have a couple of other plotlines, but when pros are working the material, stale can be the new fresh. This is the finest romantic comedy of the fall. It’s also the only good romantic comedy of the fall.
At the family retreat, Dan’s eye-rolling kids and parents (Dianne Wiest, John Mahoney) reserve for him “the special room” – the laundry room. As Dan practices his empty stare, the dryer moans and coughs like a retirement community.
On a visit to a bookstore, he is mistaken for an employee and asked for recommendations from a chatty customer named Marie (Juliette Binoche), who will of course turn out to be the girlfriend of Dan’s brother (Dane Cook), with much suffering on Dan’s part to come.
The whole movie depends on making Dan and Marie’s bookish flirtation plausible, charming and exciting enough to wake Dan out of a four-year stupor of loneliness, yet low-key enough for Marie to walk away thinking they can just be friends.
Once it lays the rails, the movie can coast for the next hour as Dan slow-cooks in his own frustration. While Marie charms a roomful of people, he goes to fetch dessert and looks like he’s going to go all “Hostel Part II” on an apple pie; when he opens the freezer, he puts his head in it.
Meanwhile, he’s trying to keep a sneaky Lothario’s paws off his teen daughter (“You are a MURDERER OF LOVE!” she cries), searching for ways to keep the little kids entertained (instead they’re frightened by his depression), and suffering the exquisite tortures of watching Binoche work out to a disco song: the Spandex inquisition.
The family isn’t completely indifferent to his plight, though: They set him up on a date with local product Ruthie “Pig Nose” Draper.
Carell is damply brilliant. Instead of wringing the laughs out of the situations, he allows them to seep out of his Charlie Brownish anguish.
The story is as shy as he is. Whenever the potential for major ridiculousness comes up, it (usually) slinks away instead, as though it wasn’t really in the mood to make itself noticed. Once in a while, it’s a little too in touch with its feelings: No two straight men have ever discussed the meaning of love while washing dishes together, except in chick flicks.
With its stooped shoulders and its cloudy skies, its muted folk soundtrack by Sondra Lerche and Carell’s nimbus of desperation, the movie is a surprisingly indie-inflected offering from Disney, whose machine-tooled plots usually have as much creative spark as a boardroom presentation.
There’s also a cameo by Emily Blunt (“The Devil Wears Prada”), who is merely awesome; a funny demonstration of how dancing can morph into a smackdown, even in the kind of pub that has a captain’s wheel over the bar; and a cheerfully nonjudgmental look at plagiarism. When Juliette Binoche is at stake, you’d better reveal your true feelings with any stolen words available.
Running time: 98 minutes. Rated PG-13 (mild innuendo). At the Lincoln Square, the Kips Bay, the Orpheum, others.