Is Dan in Real Life a Christmas movie?

The pancake poster is awful and irrelevant, almost certainly a reason why this film was never taken more seriously. As family dramedies go, it’s pretty terrific, wearing its melancholy heart on its sleeve to great emotional effect and generating major laughs from true-to-life, refreshingly wholesome comic observations. Hedges’ screenplay wheels through setups and payoffs like nobody’s business, and it’s disarmingly frank about how much Dan’s grieving process has negatively affected nearly every other aspect of his life. Honesty is paramount. Even when the short-lived saga of Ruthie Draper threatens to become too mean, it’s illustrating truth: otherwise loving families can turn callous and shitty at the drop of a hat, and toxic masculinity can rear its ugly head just as easily. Carell and Binoche are lovely here. It’s tough to think of a less likely screen pairing, but their fumbling, charged chemistry is off the charts.

DAN IN REAL LIFE is a delightfully offbeat romantic comedy with none of the overt sleaze that accompanies most comedies these days. There is, however, some brief foul language and sexual innuendo, but most of the movie offers plenty of clean comedy and positive moral values that parents can enjoy with their teenage and adult children. The bigger drawback probably is the lack of religious context in the movie.

Content:

(BB, Ro, LL, V, S, A, M) A strong moral worldview advocating positive family values, integrity and good parenting with some light Romantic elements, but no religious, spiritual or biblical references; two “d” words, two “h” words, one SOB, and seven light profanities such as “My God”; light violence includes a punch in the eye and very light touch football violence; no depicted sex but a couple sexual innuendoes, man and woman do light suggestive stretching moves after aerobics, man and woman roll around on ground briefly, teenagers kiss but father pulls the couple away, shots of dancing at a bar, and comical shower scene when fully clothed man deliberately looks away when woman has to step into shower naked but nothing salacious is shown; no nudity shown but naked woman steps into a shower with images of her neck, head and part of her shoulders; alcohol use and two couples visit a bar; no smoking; and, lying, jealousy and man recommends Gandhi to woman.

More Detail:

DAN IN REAL LIFE is a delightfully offbeat romantic comedy starring Steve Carell with none of the overt sleaze that accompanies most comedies these days. There is some brief foul language and light sexual innuendo, but most of the movie offers plenty of clean comedy that parents can enjoy with their teenage and adult children if they decide to go. The movie’s major drawback is that it doesn’t place its family values issues in a religious or spiritual context referring to God, Jesus Christ or the Bible.

Steve Carell plays Dan Burns, a widower with three daughters who writes a local column about parenting and family issues. Ignoring objections from his two teenage daughters, Dan takes the family to Rhode Island, where the rest of their family is visiting Dan’s parents, played by Dianne Wiest and John Mahoney.

Dan’s mom advises Dan to take the afternoon to get away and go to the nearby small town. In a bookstore there, Dan meets an alluring woman named Marie, played by Juliette Binoche. She gives Dan her card, but advises him that she’s just started a romantic relationship with another man.

Back at his parents’ quaint New England house, Dan tells everyone about the woman he met. His brother, Mitch (played by Dane Cook), tells him to go ahead and pursue the woman. Everyone agrees because it has been four years since Dan’s beloved wife has died and Dan hasn’t been seeing anyone in all that time.

Of course, who should Marie’s new boyfriend be but Mitch, Dan’s brother. No matter how hard they try to cover it up, Dan and Marie cannot help but fall in love. Sadly, Mitch is also falling for Marie in a big way. This love triangle presents Dan with some complicated dilemmas regarding the family values he’s been trying to teach his daughters.

There’s a great country song by Sara Evans called “Suds in the Bucket” about an 18-year-old girl who shocks her parents when she runs away to get married. The song’s refrain says, “You can’t fence time and you can’t stop love.” These lyrics reflect what the protagonist Dan goes through in this movie. Dan’s teenage daughters are growing older and becoming interested in boys, especially the younger teenager. Meanwhile, Dan himself, when he meets Marie, discovers that he’s finally found someone he may like to marry some day. His brother, Mitch, tells Dan that “all’s fair in love and war,” but Dan knows that that sentiment is not what he’s been trying to teach his daughters. All of this makes for many funny and poignant moments. A solution to their problems finally presents itself to Dan, Mitch and Marie, but not before some pain and conflict.

As noted above, DAN IN REAL LIFE contains brief foul language and brief sexual innuendo. This content is strong enough for a caution for pre-teenagers and other moviegoers.

A bigger problem perhaps is the fact that none of the characters are guided overtly by God, Jesus Christ or the Bible. Without God, Jesus and the Bible, the concepts of family values, marriage and good parenting ultimately are meaningless. These concepts should be rooted in God, Jesus and the Bible, especially if you want a truly happy, productive and satisfying life here on Earth as well as beyond the grave. Even so, it is good to see that this movie makes a stab at considering such issues in a relatively clean, mostly (but not completely) family-friendly way.

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