Lars and the Real Girl

Everyone must go see this movie! I have been waiting its release for ages now and boy did I love it. It’s funny, poignant, quirky, nicely paced and just fabulous.The premise is pretty out there at first glance.Lars(Ryan Gosling) is a nerdy, shy, almost pathetic guy. He has a bad hairdo, frumpy clothes and is an real goombah BUT he is a really nice guy – well liked and pitied at the same time. He goes to church on Sunday, carries things for ladies, greets the receptionist at work with a compliment..not a bad word to say…and folks wonder why he has no girlfriend. There is one girl at church who we know right away fancies Lars but he runs from her like a bat outta hell…he’s just a goombah!!Who knows what triggers it, but suddenly Lars receives his dream girl: a life sized anatomically correct bombshell made of plastic who he calls his new girlfriend (named Bianca). She comes with a sad but honorable story (according to Lars) and he proudly carts her around in her wheelchair (she’s a doll afterall, she doesn’t walk on her own). Everyone in the small town goes along with it cause, well, goombah or not, Lars is a nice guy.Patricia Clarkson plays the therapist / GP who takes him into a kinda therapy (he’s just waiting for Bianca’s “treatments” to end, and thus waits in her therapy/office). She is her usual celelestial self. It is at her gentle nudging that we get to see Lars’ pain as it comes to the surface in physicality and just plain ole great acting. Ryan Gosling should get another Oscar nod for this one (like in Half Nelson)I read an article in which the director Craig Gillespie states that he wanted to alienate Lars from the audience as much as possible. It didn’t work for me. I sympathized with him immediately. Maybe if they had made a big show of him porking the doll we would have felt differently. But sex with the doll was never shown or mentioned by Lars. See, Bianca is deeply religious and sleeps at his brothers house (Lars lives in an apartment over the garage)The film shows us some real family dynamics (made me think about my own relationship with my siblings) and just good people living together and caring about one of their own. Cause sometimes, people are really great to each other. This was a smart feel good movie with some great laughs in it. Convinced? Tell yo friends!Please view the trailer below and visit the myspace page (in my top friends)And visit the official movie web site “Lars and the Real Girl”