Dan in Real Life

I’ve tried to write this three times now, but I have to keep starting over. Dan in Real Life is the best movie I’ve seen this year, and if you haven’t seen it, go and do so. And do so quickly, because it’s probably just about finished with its run in theaters.

But the reason I have to keep starting this over is that I’m not sure how to feel about it. It was, in one shot, the funniest, most touching, and most depressing movie I’ve seen all year.

Spoilers follow, so stop reading if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

Dan in Real Life is an interesting creature, because it manages to balance some of the funniest moments I’ve seen this season - I laughed out loud a lot while watching this movie - with some of the most heart-rending. When you watch this movie, you’ll be laughing one moment, and in the next you’ll be asking yourself how Dan is able to hold on and keep going.

The humor in this movie isn’t the kind of slapstick, “oh no, he just got hit in the crotch, again” kind of thing that passes for humor in most films these days, but the kind of humor that’s funny because it’s real. It’s funny because it shows us how absurd a lot of real life is, how absurd we are. It’s the kind of humor that would make you cringe a little, if you were watching it happen to real people instead of characters on a screen.

And the emotion isn’t the kind of contrived disaster that is so easy to find in Hollywood, either. Aside for the initial conceit, that Dan just happens to meet and fall for his brother’s girlfriend at a random bookstore-cum-bait-shop on the Jersey Shore, there was never a moment when I thought that the writers were cheating to get an emotional response. When you’re watching this movie, you can see pieces of your own life, your own family. Dan thinks and acts like a real person, and you can identify with him.

At least I can. Maybe you’re all better adjusted than I am - actually, that’s pretty much a certainty - but when I was watching Dan, I could see myself. When I was watching Dan, I could see the train-wreck coming, I could see the disaster looming, I could see the fallout, and I wanted to shout at him, to grab him and shake him and tell him that he’s going to mess everything up. And I could see myself doing the exact same thing.

Love will make you do the stupid. Especially when it seems like it was meant to be, like it was arranged by heaven. Especially when it seems like it might be your last chance to be happy.

Dan is, to borrow a phrase, living a life of quiet desperation. Watching him make breakfast and pack up the car and sleep next to the washing machine, I could almost hear his thoughts: “this is my life, and I just have to live it.” He’s broken, and he knows it, and he’s just trying to do the best he can.

And then she comes along, and it seems like she can make everything better. You can open up to her, talk to her, trust her. She can relate to you, understand you, have fun with you. It was meant to be. And it might never happen again.

You would do anything to hold on to something like that. So would I. So would Dan. He’d try to be strong, he’d try to be moral, he’d try to do what’s right, but in the end he’d fail. Just like I would.

In real life, the ending to a story like this is almost never happy. In real life, your brother doesn’t forgive you that easily, your family doesn’t forget that quickly.

But this isn’t real life, this is Dan in Real Life. This is a movie. And in the movies, everything works out in the end. In the movies, your brother hooks up with the hot salsa dancing plastic surgeon, your daughters love your new girlfriend, and the family doesn’t feel at all awkward about the whole thing.

If the movie hadn’t ended this way, I would be on here telling you how much it sucked, and how I don’t go to the movies to be reminded of real life. Instead, I’m here telling you that this was the best movie I’ve seen in a very long time, and that it made me think of real life anyway.