Dan in real life

If real life were like this, who would need the movies?

Dan (Carell) is a widower mourning his wife and raising three daughters, who drives nearly half a day to spend time with his extended family for the holidays at a house by the seaside, which is big enough to be called a mansion but just cuddly enough to be called a home.

The family starts with a father and mother who uncomplainingly toil away behind the kitchen counter to keep the brood full and happy, when they are not worrying about their mental health and organising dates for them, that is, and goes on to Dan’s two equally good-natured brothers and a sister and their happily un-interfering children. The only thing missing from the picture are dogs.

In walks the mysterious girlfriend of one of the brothers who is pretty, funny, brainy, sporty and a hit with the children, all at the same time, and she happens to be Juliette Binoche. One encounter at a bookshop — where else — and Dan and she are hooked.

Obviously as the brother gets Marie — she is French, no doubts about that — home for the holidays, things get complicated. As she wins over the family, whether teaching them salsa moves or tossing up delicious pancakes, Dan gets more and more miserable. Now comes a childhood acquaintance who has grown up to be a risqué doctor, just in time for Marie to feel a little jealous.

Dan, the perfect father by all accounts who can juggle laundry and launch singlehandedly and writes a popular column advising people on relationships, meanwhile has to handle three churlish daughters who won’t be pleased. One is 17, wants to get behind the wheels and won’t take no for an answer, the other is younger and imagines herself in love. The third is too young to be a rebel but old enough to tell her father to go search for his love.

All that is incidental, however, in this love story that plods on to its inevitable ending. Whether it’s the daughters or the embarrassment in Dan falling for his brother’s girlfriend, nothing really is allowed to mar the happy picture. The saving grace is that you couldn’t have two more unassuming actors than Carell and Binoche in the roles.

Dan in Real Life obviously could do with a dose of real life. From the writer of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and About a Boy, Peter Hedges, one would expect that much.

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