Steve Carell

Little Miss Sunshine
$14.98
I guess I just don't understand why people seem to so enjoy portrayals of hideous dysfunction in families. I found this movie to be so awful that I couldn't even make it through the dinner scene to finish the rest of what I think was probably more of the same: scenes of a family that is ridiculously screwed up. Why do people like this kind of cr*p? Isn't there enough garbage to see out there in our day-to-day world? So sue me, I didn't watch the whole thing, but I couldn't stomach anymore of the nastiness.

Evan Almighty (Widescreen Edition)
$14.98
This movie is an excellent family movie. A little under the radar of family movies. It has something for everyone. The boys and I thought it was funny as it keep all of our interest. My boys are 10 and 12. It also showed the important father sons' relationship and the parents realtionship.
The premise is simple enough. Busy father with too much on his mind. His important job is taking away from the family. God gives him the ark to build to bring the family together and in that comes some laughs and lessons to be learned. Overall, well worth the watch.

Get Smart [Blu-ray]
$35.99
Yay! My 100th review. Now that that's done; I couldn't imagine Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway in an action film but they pulled it off well. Nobody can top what Adams, Feldon, Platt, Kopell, etc. did in the series and the actors in this don't rip off their interpretations or belittle what they had done. Carell plays Max with a deadpan wit, which I enjoy, compared to Adams' nasily voice which defined the character back in the 60s and it still does now. Hathaway is the accomplished agent who doesn't even tolerate Max until the end while Feldon immediately fell in love with him. Platt's Chief grew exasperated with Max's antics while Arkin's actually admired Max's talent. And Kopell (who makes a cameo) used a thick German accent while Terence Stamp is an English actor who plays Seigfreid with a bit more menace. The references to the series are excellent from Max's catchphrase to the shoe-phone. Even the three cars Adams drove in the opening credits are featured. The plot is a little cliched (drawing comparisons from how Steve Martin's Clouseau gets humiliated only to be redeemed in the end) and some twists aren't that surprising but it doesn't stop this from being funny and exciting. The gags and jokes are clever (this being one of few comedies I've seen in theatres and the whole audience was laughing) but the vomit joke was disgusting and not remotely funny. The action sequences were executed well, some scenes being homages to the Bond films (the original series being a spoof of them) such as the free fall fight sequence with Dalip (who reminds me a little of Richard Keil's Jaws and Kabir Bedi's Gobinda) from Moonraker. Trevor Rabin's score is excellent and I love the reorchestrated TV theme.

Dan in Real Life [Blu-ray]
$34.99
I blame it solely on that horribly cheesy poster art portraying Steve Carell's head laying on a stack of flapjacks, but I wrote off `Dan in Real Life' well before actually seeing it despite the good reviews and word of mouth from friends. It was supposed to be really good, but in my head all I saw was cheesy ridiculousness pretending to be sincere. I'm really glad that I finally gave in and watched this film this past weekend.

What a treasure.

I know this may seem like an odd comparison, and I will say off the bat that the film I'm about to compare it to does have some heavier themes, but this reminded me a lot of last years independent surprise `Rachel Getting Married'. In fact, I actually think that overall, `Dan in Real Life' is the better of the two films, or at least the most complete and comfortable of the two (when have I ever shunned away from discomfort in a cinematic offering?). I had a few issues with `Rachel's construction, but here I was completely soaking up every frame. It was funny, touching, charming, emotionally resonate and beautifully structured.

In quoting the film itself, and my review's title; "Plan to be surprised".

Steve plays Dan, an advice columnist who has lost his wife to an illness and is rearing his three young daughters with difficulty. His eldest daughter just wants to be given some freedoms, his middle daughter just wants to be allowed to express her newfound love and his youngest daughter just wants a little attention. Dan, depressed yet never to the dramatically overstated and clich���d effect that many actors would have played it, is just not capable of giving them what they need. When they make a trip to visit family, Dan meets the beautiful Marie and sparks fly, but she is involved and so they part only to uncover that they will be spending a lot of time together as Marie is dating Dan's younger brother Mitch. Trying to hide their growing affection for one another, Dan and Marie try and play cool, but it soon becomes more than either of them can handle.

The film is so much more than a glorified rom-com, as it seemed to have been marketed as. I really wish that this would have gotten the push it deserved, and that it had been campaigned as what it really is; a heartfelt and honest portrait of middle-aged growth and development. There is a sincerity about the way Dan comes to terms with his own person, trying to understand who he is as a man, as a father, as a widower. Carell is outstanding here (something I never imagined that I would say). Juliette Binoche is marvelous, as usual, giving her delicate performance a layer of spunk and wit that makes her delicious in every sense of the word. I even enjoyed Dane Cook's performance, and I find him repulsive. He was genuine and charming and natural.

I just love the piano-side sing-along (piggyface), for it was scenes like that that gave the film this lovely sense of naturalness.

Between the stellar cast and the wonderfully constructed scripting (nothing is ever too clich���d and even the romance is developed with smarts as apposed to the usual laziness) that contains some comical yet appropriate dialog ("MURDERER OF LOVE!"), `Dan in Real Life' is the real deal. I am just in such a state of pleasant and very welcomed shock right now.

Now, let's talk about fixing that ridiculous cover-art.