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sweet delusions
Lars & The Single Girl movie review
by erin thursby    scopes1925@msn.com
A- Rated PG13 106 min

      Lars and the Real Girl is one of those movies where the best thing to do is just to go see it, knowing absolutely nothing. If you like weird, indie style flicks with a sweet, quirky sense of humor, just go see it and stop reading now. Seriously. Right. Now.
      Looks like you’re still reading, so you must be one of those people who have to know something about a movie before you see it. There’s nothing wrong with that. You’re the reason there are reviews. If you liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this might be the flick for you.
      Ostensibly, Lars and the Real Girl is about an anti-social dude named Lars who develops a delusion that his life-sized sex doll is a flesh-and-blood girl. What prevents the movie from spiraling into porn territory is the fact that he believes that Bianca (the sex doll) is a religious girl. In fact, she has an entire, elaborate history and is wheelchair bound.
      It’s a flimsy premise, but the filmmaker, a decent script and the level of the acting make it work. So much could have gone so wrong with this film, but miraculously, it doesn’t go wrong. It goes right. The casting director alone deserves a special award. It’s hard for me to believe that the director (Craig Gillespie) who gave us Mr. Woodcock, also directed Lars. The script writer, more believably, is Nancy Oliver, whose writing credits include a stint on the TV show Six Feet Under.
      Some nay-sayers might object to the light treatment of mental illness, but it isn’t about reality. It’s about fantasy, about possibility in our delusions. That’s what film is about, after all.
      One thing that did bother me about the movie: overhead mics were often in the shots. It tended to take me out of the scene just when I was absorbed in it, destroying the delusion that I come to the theater for—that all the people on the screen are real.
      It’s a testament to Ryan Gosling’s acting ability that you never question his simple belief in Bianca as a real person. I couldn’t help but love him, for all his strangeness and distance from people.
      The rest of the cast holds up their end as well. Emily Mortimer plays Karin, Lars’ concerned sister-in-law, with a tenacity of love and middle-Americana sensibility. Paul Schneider plays Lars’ brother, who is by turns focused on curing his brother, embarrassed and guilt-ridden.
      Though there’s value in watching Lars work through problems, using Bianca to do it, it’s even more interesting watching so-called normal people begin to treat her as though she’s a real person with real feelings.
      The movie ends up being an inescapably sweet and strange fantasy, somewhat colored by the real world. It’s interesting without being edgy, fantastic without being unreal. If you can invest emotion in these characters, you’ll find it easy to lose yourself with Lars, Bianca and the people who love them both.

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