Lars and the Real Girl is warm, funny, and mov­ing, but felt a lit­tle “screen­play” to me. Aside from the indie film cliché of The Small Town (which affords an iso­lated com­mu­nity of eccentrics and an eco­nomic small cast), it seems to be a pre­cisely work­shopped explo­ration of a sim­ple com­pelling premise: a man falls in love with a sex doll (and yes, they actu­ally exist). How­ever, the fine script and per­for­mances really do sell the unlikely con­ceit. Ryan Gosling makes a poten­tially unap­peal­ing char­ac­ter very sym­pa­thetic, and indie queen Patri­cia Clark­son is so sub­limely calm (watch her respond to each out­ra­geous devel­op­ment in Lars’ life with a blink and a pause) that I sus­pect she would make a great shrink in real life.

Guess what’s com­ing to dinner

If I were in a screen­writ­ing class work­shop­ping this script, I think per­haps I might point out one miss­ing aspect: we see the town pull together to sup­port Lars, but would they do so for just any cit­i­zen? I’m not sure there’s a sense of why they’re espe­cially pro­tec­tive of Lars in particular.

Even bet­ter than the real thing?

Offi­cial movie site: www.larsandtherealgirl-themovie.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

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