A Real Life Winner

by Scott Pospishil

Steve Carell is on the radar yet again in a movie that will touch all of your emotions, but, most of all, you WILL laugh. The story starts off showing Dan Burns (Steve Carell),who writes an advice column for his local newspaper, and his hardships when it come to raising his 3 teenage daughters. While heading up to his parents house for a family get together, he meets a woman, Marie (Juliette Binoche), at a book store and they hit it off. When he arrives at his parents house Dan’s brother Mitch (Dane Cook) introduces his girlfriend who is no other than the woman that Dan met in the bookstore. In this situation, however, Dan cannot take his own advice and gets caught up in an entertaining love triangle that includes Mitch and Marie.

This movie seemed as if it was broken down into three parts which actually worked out well. At first, it kind of eases you into the comedy and into Dan's life. I chuckled at some of the jokes in the beginning but nothing too crazy. Next, for the better part of the movie, it was hilarious. I mean one joke or awkward situation after another. This movie had one of the best shower scenes ever (don't get your hopes up its only rated PG-13). By best I mean funniest. The end part of the movie was where most of the drama occurred.

Steve Carell’s character was pure genius. It seemed to me as if he took all of his well known previous rolls and mixed them together. Let’s just say it worked. We definitely see his 40 Year-old Virgin character in his cheesy lines and dancing, his Little Miss Sunshine character in the "he is so depressed he's funny" parts, and we also see the famous Michael Scott character from The Office come out in some of the many awkward moments.

There was not much to dislike about this movie. I guess my one main knock on it was that it was fairly predictable. There were more than a few parts where the real life Dan, meaning Dan Scillieri my fellow critic, and I would call out what was going to happen next and sure enough we were right every time. The other thing that I noticed was the stupidity in some situations. What I mean is that if these were real life situations, no one would get caught in the situations that these characters found themselves in. However, these situations lead to some of the funniest parts of the movie so I can look past them.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the type of movie where you’re going to be memorizing the lines and using them in your everyday life. It was a very solid, smart comedy that will leave you with a good feeling when it’s over. You should definitely bring your significant other to this one; I think this movie will be a big hit with the ladies.

My Grade:: B+