Dan in Real Life Movie Synopsis:
A conflicted romance collides head-on into the perils of family relations with fun-filled results in Peter Hedges’ fresh, clever and hilarious take on the slice-of-life comedy, DAN IN REAL LIFE. Comic sensation Steve Carell stars as an ordinary guy who accidentally stumbles out of his “play-it-safe” life into the exhilarating world of the unexpected when he falls in love on what was supposed to be a family getaway. Starring alongside standup star Dane Cook and Academy Award® winner Juliette Binoche, Carell is about to discover a family weekend of chaos, confusion, awkwardness -- and ultimately, his entire family’s extraordinary capacity for love in the face of left-field surprises.
It all begins with widowed father and family advice columnist Dan Burns (Carell), who is still reeling from the heartache of loss and takes refuge by trying to maintain order with his three rebellious young girls, while dodging anything unexpected or outside the box. But when Dan heads to Rhode Island, his miffed daughters in tow, for the annual Fall weekend thrown by the large and boisterous Burns family, everything changes. Soon after his arrival, he runs into an alluring woman named Marie (Binoche) in a bookshop. For the first time in a very, very long time, Dan experiences real, live sparks – only to have to douse them liberally when he discovers Marie is, in fact, the brand new girlfriend his brother Mitch (Cook) is about to proudly introduce to the family.
As the weekend gets underway in the close quarters of a crowded house filled with quirky, prying relatives, Dan and Marie try to squelch and cover up their growing mutual attraction at every turn, leading to one comical situation after another. Yet, no matter how hard they try to do the very opposite, Dan and Marie can’t help but fall in love. Now Dan is about to realize, that no matter how wise safety might seem, when it comes to real life, he’s going to have to break all the rules.
Directed by Peter Hedges and written by Pierce Gardner and Hedges, the fun-filled DAN IN REAL LIFE is Hedges’ follow-up to “Pieces of April,” his critically acclaimed, Academy Award®-nominated directorial debut. The producers are Jon Shestack and Brad Epstein and the executive producers are Noah Rosen, Darlene Caamaño Loquet and Mari Jo Winkler-Ioffreda. The co-producer is Dianne Dreyer.
