Dan in Real Life.

"Dan in Real Life isn't crap, but it's about as pleasant as a movie can get without actually being any good," writes Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly. "The movie is so warm and cozy it might as well be wearing a big, fuzzy sweater."

"Steve Carell's pursed-lipped awkwardness and sweet buffoonery are both in fine form in Dan in Real Life, but those endearing qualities aren't nearly enough to salvage Peter Hedges's incorrigibly hackneyed film," writes Nick Schager in Slant.

"Dan in Real Life is neither wildly farcical nor mockingly cruel, but rather, for the most part, winningly gentle and observant," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Yes, there is the maudlin back story of Dan's widowhood, and the familiar scenario of all that quirky kin stuffed into one house for a few days. But Mr Hedges, a seasoned screenwriter, showed in his directing debut, Pieces of April, that he could infuse tired conventions of domestic comedy with fresh life and real intelligence. And here, working in a less self-consciously eccentric mode, he does it again."

Updated through 10/28.

"There's nothing remotely real about this over-confected romantic comedy, in which Carell plays a newspaper advice columnist and single dad who falls in love with his brother's girlfriend during a weekend at the family beach house," writes Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post. "Come to think of it, that house - a magnificent shake-sided pile on Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay - might be the only believable character in a movie in which the idea of resolving a scene is for everyone to engage in some adorable group activity, whether it's a crossword puzzle contest, charades, aerobics, a Kennedyesque game of touch football or, heaven help us, a too-cute-for-words talent show. (What, no potato-sack race?)"

"It's a much funnier and moving film than that description would suggest," counters Keith Phipps at the AV Club.

"There's nothing groundbreaking about Dan in Real Life - it's a picture that could have been made 10 or 20 years ago - and yet its easygoing, affable nature is exactly what makes it pleasurable," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek.

"Steve Carell of The 40-Year-Old Virgin has a personality, or maybe it is a lack of personality, that is growing on me," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "He is content to exist on the screen without sending wild semaphores of his intentions, his uniqueness and how funny he is. He's an everyman like a very (very) low-key Jack Lemmon."

Robert Wilonsky in the Voice: "One could fill this entire space with the titles of films from which writer-director Peter Hedges nicks his story, but for the sake of expediency, we'll narrow it down to a desert-island handful: Home for the Holidays, The Family Stone, Sleepless in Seattle, What About Bob?, and Hedges's own excellent Thanksgiving-dinner-flavored Pieces of April."

"If we could remotely believe in any of these characters or situations, a cast this strong might have pulled this movie off," sighs Alonso Duralde at MSNBC.

"[I]f what you want is a star-driven sophisticated romantic comedy that is successfully aimed at actual adults, the wait can seem like forever. Until now," heralds Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times.

"Dan, in real life, is a jerk," writes Mike Russell. "Seriously: In no universe (other than the precious little microcosm created by this film) would Dan be considered anything other than a self-involved, passive-aggressive, stalkerish, pathetic, traitorous emotional amateur."

Update, 10/27: Bryant Frazer offers a bit of advice.

Update, 10/28: "The men in dude comedies are Neanderthals," writes Time's Richard Corliss. "he men in chick comedies have evolved into losers.... A mainstream comedy with an indie vibe, Dan hopes to be the film that gets couples back in the theater for something they'd both respond to.... One of the effects of the rowdy, guy-centric Judd Apatow movies is that, by establishing new rules for movie comedy, they've make milder romantic ones seem like relics from the 1950s."

Posted by dwhudson at October 26, 2007 9:00 AM