Adventures in Netflixing: "Lars and the Real Girl"

When I first heard of this picture, I immediately thought of Adrian Brody sporting a different kind of wood in Dummy.  I'm sure there has to be enough other comparably themed movies to fill a small sub-genre entitled, "Movies About Maladjusted Boys Who Love Inanimate Objects."  Though when I tried googling this topic, I mostly wound up getting an eyeful of weird porn, so never mind. 

Somehow the filmmakers behind Lars avoid getting too schticky (a la Weekend At Bernie's) or weird, which is pretty remarkable for a film centering around a guy's relationship with a sex doll.  Actually, the premise made for a rather nice metaphor about the sometimes ludicrous baggage being carted around by the people we love and live with, and what they in turn must endure when we start digging deep into our own bag of tricks. 

The scene in which Lars first presents his "girlfriend" to his brother and sister-in-law at dinner is particularly hilarious, in no small part because of the universal experience of that first meeting with the invariably flawed significant other of someone we know.....a meeting which all too often spurs us to also retreat to the kitchen and gasp or snicker in disbelief behind their backs when the love interest in question fails to live up to our own exacting standards.  Then again, many of life's standard scenarios lead to gasping and snickering behind people's backs afterward because they fail to live up to our own exacting standards.  Such is life, and filmmaking in particular.

Beyond one or two truly LOL moments, like the dinner scene mentioned above, I mostly found Lars and the Real Girl to be equal parts wry and sweet.  More than one serious film critic trotted out the word, "Capra-esque" to describe this flick. (What is it with serious film critics, anyway?  They can't seem to go for more than two or three reviews without invoking one of the "greats," a la Capra or Kurosawa.  It's like a gag reflex with those folk.  But I digress.....)

Gosling kicks ass and steers this vehicle away from the predictable potholes in which a sex doll movie might otherwise look like little more than a life-sized posterior cavity plug.  Patricia Clarkson and Emily Mortimer also work it nicely.  I give it an A-.