The premise of "Dan in Real Life" is that widower Dan Burns (Steve Carell) meets Marie (Juliette Binoche) in a bookstore and, after three minutes, falls in love with her. Turns out, she's the new girlfriend of Dan's younger brother, Mitch (Dane Cook). So, if Dan hadn't been on vacation with his family and the woman he happened to run into for three minutes in the local bookstore hadn't been his brother's girlfriend, none of this would even have taken place. Don't you hate when that happens?

Precociousness runs through the Burns family like mental illness runs through the Spears family. Really, it's like the entire family is in some sort of perpetual contest to see who can be the cutest. The winner, as you would expect, is Dan's youngest daughter, Lily (Marlene Lawston), who's so full of that precocious little kid wisdom that's about forty years beyond her maturity level that the writers actually have to put an entire conversation between Dan and Lily in the movie because they know that nobody in their audience is going to believe that a little girl can be that wise. In fact, the characters are sort of like puppets, the more I think about it. Nana Burns (Dianne Wiest) is the adorable mommy. Poppy (John Mahoney) is the adorable daddy. Who the hell calls their parents Nana and Poppy anyway? What is that? Then there's Dane Cook's precociousness. Watching Dane Cook try to control himself is like watching a drug addict trying to get out of a crack house.

Director Peter Hedges also directed "Pieces of April". "Dan in Real Life" is another of these films that explores family relationships in a way that makes one want to sigh and exhale a lung. Adding to the film's undercurrent of sadness is the fact that Dan has lost his wife and is trying to deal with his three daughters (Alison Pill and Marlene Lawston are the other two). Thus, you feel extra sad for him when he realizes Marie is with Mitch.

Whenever Hollywood pitches something as "real life", you can be virtually certain that it's not.