Review: ‘Lars and the Real Girl’ on DVD

Zac:

Ryan Gosling is fantastic in this quirky, silly, and a bit ridiculous coming of age story. Lars is lonely, damaged, quiet, shy, and avoids human contact pretty much whenever possible. He in a normal job, living in the garage of the family house which is occupied by his brother(Paul Schneider) and his expecting wife(Emily Mortimer). Mortimer is desperately seeking any kind of emotion out of Lars to show some companionship with his family or someone else. He ends up fulfilling her wish, only its with a real sex doll. The anatomically correct Bianca become Lars’ Christian girlfriend, sleeping in separate houses, but doing everything together when they can Lars’ brother and wife freak, with good reason. But after a trip to the town doctor, they begin to accept and treat Bianca as real and the rest of the town follows suit over time.
Ryan Gosling is one of the best up and coming actors and he does a fantastic job here as the wounded lead that deals with his problems by deluding himself with Bianca who has a lot of similarities to himself. As the movie advances we find the real reasons for Bianca while we also begin to see the real Lars come out of his shell and become a man.
Keli Garner plays the new cute girl at work and plays an important role in the evolution of Bianca and Lars. Having this be her first big role, she does at great job and is as cute as a button, and you feel a bit sorry for her as she longs for Lars’ attention.
Mortimer is good as well and is really sweet and endearing as a a mother figure for Lars that he never had. While Paul Schneider also turns in some good work here, but nowhere near as good as he was in Jesse James.
The plot might cause some of you to roll your eyes while some might laugh at every weird look shot at Bianca. The town being so supportive is quite a stretch to believe but if you sit back and just buy into it there is plenty to enjoy in this movie. While it drags it feet a bit from time to time, there are also some great comedy moments that keep the movie chugging along.
Writing this out only enhances how silly this movie really is but there is enough sweetness and some really great laughs to make it worthwhile if you are at all interested in this film.

(3.5 out of 5)

Kat:

Lars and the Real Girl came out on DVD last week and you need to rent it right now. Because you didn’t see it in the theater. Almost no one did. And that is a shame and a half.

The movie stars Ryan Gosling as the title character, an emotionally repressed young man whose life changes when he orders a sex doll named Bianca over the Internet. The orenuse of the movie just shrieks QUIRKY, and it is that, but it is also a movie with a heart and a soul and a sense of community. Lars does not live in a vacuum as so many movie characters do. He has family, co-workers, friends. He has a context. He has a loving community of caring people around him who want to see him happy, even if it means pretending Bianca is as real as he seems to think she is.

The movie isn’t perfect and it isn’t for everyone. The opening is leisurely. And the tone at the beginning feels a little over the top. But right about the time Bianca arrives, the movie does too and if you can buy into the whimsy, this movie will reward your patience.

Gosling is good in a tricky part, but the reason to see the movie is Patricia Clarkson, who is fantastic as the compassionate, complex family doctor who understands that Lars has invited Bianca into his life for a reason.

The movie was written by Nancy Oliver, whose screenplay was nominated for an Oscar but lost out to Diablo Cody’s script for Juno. Oliver’s best-known for her work on Six Feet Under, where she wrote some of the series’ best episodes. Her strength is writing multi-dimensional characters and the characters here are very strong. That’s particularly true of the female characters, who embrace the situation with whole-hearted enthusiasm. Emily Mortimer is terrific as Lars’ concerned sister-in-law, but so is Nancy Beatty as Mrs. Gruner, an older woman who takes a maternal interest in Lars and Karen Robinson as Cindy, his upbeat co-worker who takes Bianca’s appearance at a party she’s throwing completely in stride.

There is great tenderness in this movie as well, and tenderness is not something you often see on screen either. There’s a wrenching scene when Lars’ older brother Gus (the excellent Paul Schneider) tells his wife that he blames himself for Lars’ illness. She folds him into her embrace and he curls up like a child and it’s a powerful moment.

Lars and the Real Girl is made up of a lot of wonderful moments and in the end, it adds up to a very special movie. Check it out.

[rating: 3.5/5]