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Lars and the Real Girl | 
 enlarge | Director: Craig Gillespie
Actors: Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner, Patricia Clarkson
Studio: MGM
Category: Movie
Buy New: $3.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  112 reviews
Sales Rank: 128
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 107
ASIN: B001954D80
Release Date: August 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 107 more reviews...
 Thought provoking October 6, 2008
I don't know if the purpose of this movie was to help de-stigmatization mental illness but I believe that it was a step forward in that direction. The movie focus on Lars and his girlfriend who is a doll. The community that he lives in goes out of their way to accept Lars's girlfriend and to help Lars heal from the death of his mother and the guilt that he feels from it.
Anyways I loved the move and bought it and have been passing it around the neighborhood.
 Very slow. If quirky for quirky's sake is your thing, then you'll like it October 2, 2008
This movie has a couple of "chuckle" moments, but as I watched it, I couldn't help but feel sad for the characters in this film. It reminded me a lot of a Christopher Guest film where you're watching unidimensional characters interact with one another in a desperate and feeble attempt to find happiness and acceptance.
Offbeat, funny & sweet September 30, 2008
Lars & the Real Girl is a love story, but not the kind of love story you start out expecting. Suffice it to say that everyone in this wintery northern town loves Lars, and Lars could use the support. He's having a bit of a crisis because his sister-in-law's pregnancy is bringing up some painful issues that he hasn't properly dealt with. How Lars chooses to deal with his crisis, however, is not only unorthodox, it will challenge the whole community's sensibilities. You see, Lars orders a life-sized doll on the Internet, and he seems to believe she's a real girl! Although you may wonder at first how a story about a man who orders a life-sized doll on the Internet could keep from descending into something vulgar, this comical heartwarmer keeps things surprisingly sweet. With a stellar cast, including Ryan Gosling and Patricia Clarkson, this movie is sure to make you smile and give you hope that people really can care enough to try to understand each other.
 Lars, the real girl, and a mustache September 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Once in a great while I am able to come across a DVD that tickles my curiousity. On this occasion Lars and the Real Girl was able to do so purely based on the title and cover art. Said cover art showcases Ryan Gosling sitting on a wooden shipping crate, holding yellow roses, and sporting a cookie-duster mustache that would make Ned Flanders envious.
As most could guess, the story centers around Lars(Gosling), a painfully withdrawn young man that lives in the garage next to his brother Gus and his wife Karin(Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer). On the surface Lars appears to be an anti-social loner who works at what appears to be a computer company. However, Karin is quite concerned about Lars, while Gus believes he just takes after his father's personality.
We soon learn that there are many traumatic events that have led up to the situation at hand. Most of which stems from the death of Lars' Mother, which occured upon his birth.
So with Lars growing up devoid of motherly affection we are practically handed the reasoning for his lack of connection with those around him. But are we to believe that the whole town would play along with this facade for the sake of a troubled young man? Writer Nancy Oliver must have been banking on the audience understanding the setting was not a place where Lars would have been ostracized from the community for his delusional frame of mind. And honestly, I can say yes, it works.
The film also works because we are rooting for Lars to snap out of his funk and end up together with the girl at work, Margo(Kelli Garner). At times it almost seems as if the entire charade with Bianca the "love doll" was intentionally put on by Lars as a way for him to work up the courage to dive into a relationship with Margo.
All of the performances are well done, but Gosling easily carries the film on his shoulders. It was also quite fun to see him embody a character that many people could relate to, which is something I haven't seen him do in any of his recent work.
Lars and the Real Girl has a fresh take on what it means to come to terms with your situation in life in regards to love, family, and lonliness. The idea of Ryan Gosling parading around with a fake girlfriend may take some getting used to, but the audience should find themselves embracing the the scenario around the same time as the people surrounding Lars do.
A very double-edged sword of a film. September 28, 2008
Although the makers of this film succeeded in giving it a tongue-in-cheek comic frisson, it also backfired by exposing how little America cares about its lonely people. Those of us who've seriously considered buying a Realdoll should not watch this movie, because we will NOT find it the least bit funny.
When Lars receives his doll and names her Bianca, his brother Gus (himself not lonely, you notice) immediately decides Lars is crazy, while Gus' wife Karen feels sorry enough for Lars to humor him, and Lars' doctor convinces them to play along with the delusion. In time, Lars' coworkers Margo (who is very proprietary about her teddy bear) and Eric (likewise proprietary about his action figures) seem to be almost as delusional as Lars is with Bianca. Lars briefly plays along with Margo's delusion by acting out his disapproval of Eric's mistreatment of the teddy bear, and Margo evidently finds this attractive. Lars decides Bianca can have no place in this new scheme of things... suffice to say, if Lars had remained indifferent toward Margo after the teddy bear incident, the story would have gone horribly wrong.
The only reason why I've chosen to give this movie five stars is because it deals with the plight of America's lonely people in an unabashed, out-of-the-closet way which no film has done before: how would a community react to one man's acceptance of an ersatz woman? Other than that, this film suffers from lighting which is at times so poor that I had no idea what was going on, and the acting and dialog seemed like something out of a low-budget 1970s TV movie. No other movie I've seen was so badly in need of voice-over narration.
Worth it if you're the sort of mean-spirited person who gets a big kick out of tormenting lonely people, but otherwise, forget it.
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