Disc Reviews
Lars and the Real Girl | DVD Review
“…something deserved for achieving that somehow with a sex doll as leading actress in this day and age”.
Coupled with Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling shot the pair to the top of the most-beautiful-couple-onscreen list with the old-school romance The Notebook. Lars and the Real Girl finds Gosling with a plastic sex doll. It’s odd, but there’s actually more rather than less heartfelt human connection in the later movie.
Director Craig Gillespie launches into kitschy-quaint territory with his followup to Mr. Woodcock, a Dodgeballs-humour type movie. It’s quite surprising Gillespie was so restrained with that brand of humour with Lars, a film that seems on the surface to lend itself so well to it. The film is about a socially inept, badly dressed man finding love on the internet through a mail-order girlfriend (paid for, shipped in, and made of plastic) and his small-town America friends and family who struggle to adjust to the shock in various ways. Maybe it’s the intelligent touch of Six Feet Under writer Nancy Oliver, but the film is filled more with insight than gags.
The film grossed $10-million worldwide, a fine feat taking into consideration its fairly limited release. High critical regard, word-of-mouth, and a zany plot seemed to propel the film into a sort of at-the-time cult status, selling out the select runs it played at. Not every audience would love it, but those that saw it seemed determined to like it from the start. The film’s critical reception seemed to mirror this; although it was generally very well received, those who disliked it panned it, citing the folksy pro-Americana and fairly shallow discussion of mental health issues as main reasons. The film was nominated for several awards including an Oscar nod for Oliver’s wry screenplay, and won a Satellite award for Gosling and a National Board of Review award for Oliver.
The Real Story of Lars and the Real Girl
This was a fairly half-hearted attempt to create something, anything for the DVD extras. It felt like a longer trailer as it was all cheesy promo. Oliver does explain her inspiration for the film, stumbling upon a sex-doll selling web site on her own time.
A Real Leading Lady
In a cast joke, the characters gossip behind the plastic doll’s back as if she were a ‘real leading lady.’ A few funny jokes, but fairly unenlightening.
Deleted Scene
The deleted scene, “the bathtub,” is quite short and only shows it was unnecessary. Action! Here you get to watch Lars and his ‘girlfriend’ take a romantic dip in the tub for a fairly silent less-than-a-minute. Cut!
The film is no hard-edged look at the modern societal and medical problems, but it does provide a nice warm slice of American apple pie. And there’s got to be something deserved for achieving that somehow with a sex doll as leading actress in this day and age.