Dan Burns wakes up early in the morning before his daughters and works so that he's able to keep up his household during normal hours. He does the laundry and places folded, sorted stacks of clothes outside his girls' rooms. Dan then makes each their favorite sandwich as he packs their lunch, making smiley faces that only he will ever see out of the condiments. You learn a lot about someone by the way they prepare their children's meals.
Despite all of that Dan - played by Steve Carell - can't make it work with his teenage daughters, all the more surprising because he's an advice columnist who specializes in helping parents understand their teenagers. Since his wife died years ago, Dan dedicated his life to his daughters, and now years of over-parenting have begun to wear thin on his independence-seeking girls.
You're a good father,"" says his youngest girl, ""but you're a bad dad."" He doesn't even show an interest in other women until he meets Marie - played by Juliette Binoche - while visiting his parents' beach house as his family gathers there to close it up for the winter. However, she is dating his brother, played by Dane Cook.
Carell is funny and charming as Dan, yet there's a hint of sadness in his performance as well. What must Dan have been like before his wife's illness? Not only must he have been a great father, but a great dad as well. Carell brings likeability to Dan, and that makes us forgive all of his missteps throughout the film because we understand he's trying to cope with not being able to be with Marie.
Supporting Carell is a great ensemble including Binoche, John Mahoney, Dianne Wiest and Cook - who's surprisingly likeable when he's not shoving his over-the-top persona down audiences' throats.
Writer/director Peter Hedges gives his material room to breathe, and it rarely hits a sour note or seems saccharine-sweet. Dan Burns and his family in ""Real Life"" exist in a vacuum, a place where Norman Rockwell and Pat Boone must be treated like the gospel. It's a place where families still get together and race to see who can finish the crossword puzzle first and put on talent shows in their living rooms. Though it seems like this would ring false, it rarely does. The film is too earnest and disarmingly sweet to question these Rockwell moments.
There are some sincerely funny moments in ""Dan,"" and Carell does a good job of balancing the humor and heart of the film. This may be a defining transitional role for Carell, in a film that allows him to transcend past slapstick comedy and be viewed as a fine dramatic actor, just as Jim Carrey did when he made ""The Truman Show.""
Though ""Dan in Real Life"" has some minor rough edges, it's satisfying to see a movie that's so refreshingly warm and good-hearted in a season where films about terrorism, corporate scandal and crime have become the norm.
Someone who puts that kind of time and effort into making his kids' lunches is someone who is worth spending time with.
