Dan Burns’ real life will make sense to anyone familiar with
the dives and soars of romantic comedies.
The relatively recent widower takes his three daughters to a family gathering where he falls for a stranger. Only she turns out to be his brother’s girlfriend. Laughs and heartache follow.
On the other hand, Steve Carell, who portrays the relationship columnist in “Dan in Real Life,” opening Friday, finds himself on a journey that at times confounds him.
“I wish I had any sort of rhyme or reason to how I’m approaching my career,” he said. “I’ve been extremely lucky so far.”
Michael Scott, regional manager at the Scranton, Pa., branch of office supply concern Dunder Mifflin, would likely find some way to own this success. Carell’s character on the NBC hit “The Office” might even raise a mug with the words “WORLD’S BEST BOSS” and toast himself.
Carell does no such thing.
Instead, the 45-year-old actor defaults to incredibly-good-fortune mode. And his sincerity doesn’t appear to merely be a tic of a press- tour habit. Though he jokes when he gets on the phone, “I am junketed out.”
Earlier, he says, someone had asked him why he’d done “The Office” and followed it up with the comedy “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” the one-two punch that proved him a comedy contender.
“I took ‘The Office’ because I was cast,” he says. Mystery solved – gently.
“And ’40-Year-Old Virgin’ is something I wrote with Judd (Apatow).”
Apatow was responsible for two of summer’s crass and heartfelt hits, “Knocked Up” and “Superbad.” Each is very much a relative of the hapless and/or horny guys brand of comedy that turned “The 40- Year-Old Virgin” into a box-office dominatrix.
“We were fortunate in that we made something we thought was funny, that we responded to,” says Carell. “This was a story that was interesting and potentially entertaining. But we weren’t making it for a demographic. We weren’t necessarily thinking about who would want to see it. And we were as surprised as anyone when people wanted to go see it and it did well.”
“Dan in Real Life” finds Carell playing the lead in a rom-com as traditional in its way as “40-Year-Old Virgin” was genre-tweaking.
“It’s a counterintuitive move that way because it doesn’t seem like the next logical thing for me to do,” he says. Although, something tonally different after his modern-day-Noah tale, “Evan Almighty,” was a washout feels just about right.
Carell, who has two children with wife Nancy Walls, has believably dear moments as a dad freaked (but trying) by his middle girl’s budding sexuality and his oldest daughter’s learner’s permit.
Directed by Peter Hedges (“Pieces of April”), the film also stars Oscar winner Juliette Binoche as Marie. Dane Cook plays Dan’s younger brother, Mitch, who becomes an unwitting rival.
“If you had said to me three years ago, that I would be appearing in a movie as Juliette Binoche’s love interest,” says Carell, “I don’t think I would have believed that.”
He recalls being very nervous to meet the French actress who won an Academy Award for her supporting turn in “The English Patient.”
“You can get the idea that she’s this fantastic, international Oscar-winning star – and she is – but she’s also this real person who doesn’t walk around acting like a movie star. What was disarming for me is she’s an incredibly funny, silly, hardy laugher. She’s funny. She’s sincere. She truly gets what makes things funny.”
So what does make things funny, apart from, say, a love- struck widower trying to do morning aerobics led by the object of his affection? Or a guy having his chest fur ripped off while his co-star pulls a Harvey Korman, struggling to suppress hysterical laughter?
“When something rings truthfully, that’s when it potentially is the funniest,” Carell says.
“When a character in a movie doesn’t realize that they’re in a comedy, that is intrinsically more funny than when they’re in a movie that thinks of itself of a comedy.”
“Dan in Real Life” makes one thing clear: Carell (set to appear next summer in the movie version of the ’60s TV spy spoof “Get Smart”) makes a truthfully handsome lead.
One writer likened him to Henry Fonda, circa Preston Sturges’ screwball beauty “The Lady Eve.”
“That is really kind,” Carell says upon hearing the comparison.
He then adds, “If my daughter ends up making a remake of ‘Barbarella’ one day, I’m in big trouble.”
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com. Be sure to check out blogs.denver .
