Lars and the Real Girl

Now on DVD.

I had trouble getting into this film. It moves slow and the characters are as about as engaging as a plastic doll.

A Lonely Guy Plays House With a Mail-Order Sex Doll
New York Times
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: October 12, 2007

Writing about American theater in 1957, the British critic Kenneth Tynan sounded a familiar note. Modern American drama, he had discovered, is a family affair. Always there is the “confused adolescent boy, just awakening to the eternal mysteries of stud poker.” There’s “a strange, stammering poetry” to this boy, who is right on track for “an emotional upheaval.” There is also “comic relief” in the form of friends and neighbors, though in time we learn that “their lives too are founded on pain and insecurity and lack of togetherness.”

Tynan could have been describing modern American independent cinema in the main; throw in more comic relief and you have “Lars and the Real Girl” in the specific. An indie wolf in old-studio sheep’s clothing, the film is about a sensitive young loner (“sensitive as a snail’s horn,” to steal another stinger from Tynan) who heaves hurt by the bucket, but finally burrows into the warm, welcoming embrace of his community. It’s part comedy, part tragedy and 100 percent pure calculation, designed to wring fat tears and coax big laughs and leave us drying our damp, smiling faces as we savor the touching vision of American magnanimity. It holds a flattering mirror up to us that erases every distortion.