The halls of most major retail operations have been decked with holly, cardboard snowflakes, and cartoon turkeys, which can mean only one thing: The Academy Awards are coming!
Best Actor Oscar nods, after all, are supposed to be reserved for guys who play tortured heroes, morally ambiguous villains, and outsize real-life characters (bonus points if they've got well-documented quirks or accents). They don't go to romantic comedy leads, right?
But as Dan, a widowed father of three who finds an unexpected (and unexpectedly complicated) chance at love, Carell is magnificent. His character's repeated attempts to derail his teenage daughter's love affair are hilarious without ever feeling forced, and yet his warbled last verse of Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open the Door" during a family talent show reduced me to tears. As Owen Gleiberman points out in his A- review of Dan in Real Life.
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