Dan in Real Life

The Rom-Com has become one of the most cliched and predictable of genres. There's a very tight formula and rare indeed is the film that dares to depart from it. Dan in Real Life flirts with the possibility of departing from formula in its above average set-up, which makes the utter predictability of its last act so much more unsatisfying and unbelievable.

The talent is promising - writer-director Peter Hedges last film was the good oddball family drama Pieces of April and he was the writer on About A Boy. Steve Carrell is playing down and understated (more Little Miss Sunshine than Evan Almighty). Juliette Binoche is usually reliable and there's a strong supporting cast including Woody Allen regular Diane Wiest and Emily Blunt.

The set-up isn't totally original. One of the unwritten rules of Hollywood is that people who make a living giving others advice can never manage their own lives - meet Dan (Carrell) a widower with three daughters who writes an advice page on bringing up children, but sometimes struggles to know how to deal with his own. On a family get together he meets Marie (Binoche) in a bookshop and they hit it off, only for Dan to discover later that she is his brother's (Dane Cook) girlfriend. Not wanting to hurt his brother, Dan bravely struggles against his feelings.

Carrell is on good form here, less manic than usual and you can't help but feel for him in his dilemma. Even Cook is surprisingly good and underplayed - maybe slightly shallower than Dan, but still a likeable guy. Real class is added by Binoche though, who gives a performance better than the material - conveying real emotion with just a look and managing to maintain enough ambiguity to raise the slightest slither of doubt. There are also some genuinely funny moments here in the family conferences and Dan's handling of his teenage daughters. Though The Devil Wears Prada's Blunt, for the second time in a month, is wasted in a lightweight tarty role.

And then the third act comes and we swing into full rom-com mode - ends are tied up far too neatly and predictably, betraying the real elements of loss and desire that had gone before. The performances get noticeably shallower, with Cook's character in particular being let down by the material and losing all credibility and we finish in the usual schmaltz.

Overall - 3/5. A promising set-up let down by a predictable ending. But good performances and some real feeling and humour along the way leave this as an above average rom-com that could have been better.