Lars and the Real Girl
A smiling man holding a bunch of yellow flowers. He is sitting in a green armchair in front of pink wallpaper. A shipping crate lies in front of him.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byCraig Gillespie
Written byNancy Oliver
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyAdam Kimmel
Edited byTatiana S. Riegel
Music byDavid Torn
Production
company
Distributed byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer[1][2] (through MGM Distribution Co.)
Release dates
  • September 9, 2007 (2007-09-09) (TIFF)
  • October 12, 2007 (2007-10-12) (United States)
Running time
106 minutes
CountryUnited States[1]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$12.5 million[1]
Box office$11.3 million[2]

Lars and the Real Girl is a 2007 American comedy-drama film written by Nancy Oliver and directed by Craig Gillespie. The film stars Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner, and Patricia Clarkson. Its plot follows Lars, a kind-hearted but socially awkward young man who develops a romantic yet nonsexual relationship with an anatomically correct sex doll, a RealDoll named Bianca.

Lars and the Real Girl was released in the United States on October 12, 2007, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Though a commercial failure, the film was positively received by critics, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, while Gosling received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.

Plot

Lars Lindstrom lives a secluded life in a small northern town. His mother died when he was born, causing his grief-stricken father to have been a distant parent to Lars and his older brother, Gus. Gus carries guilt for having left the desperate family situation as soon as he could support himself; Lars struggles with the loss of his mother during his birth and an irrational fear about the risk of death during childbirth. As a result, he exhibits avoidance behaviors and haphephobia, causing social awkwardness and isolation.

Having inherited the family home after their father's death, the two brothers both live on the property along with Gus' wife, Karin. Lars lives in the converted garage, while Gus and Karin, who is pregnant with their first child, live in the house proper. Despite Karin's efforts to bring Lars out of his shell, interacting with or relating to his family and co-workers is very difficult for him. A colleague at his office, Margo, also tries to engage him, but Lars is impervious to Margo's attempts to be friendly.

One evening, Lars happily announces to Gus and Karin that he has a visitor whom he met online, a wheelchair-mobile missionary of Brazilian and Danish descent named Bianca. The pair are startled to discover that Bianca is actually a lifelike doll, ordered from an adult website, whom Lars treats as a live human being. Concerned about his mental health, Gus and Karin convince Lars to take Bianca to see the family doctor, Dagmar Berman, who is also a psychologist. Berman diagnoses Bianca with low blood pressure and urges Lars to return under the guise of "weekly treatments" for Bianca, while actually analyzing Lars to get to the root of his behavior. Berman explains to Gus and Karin that Lars' delusion is a manifestation of an underlying problem that needs to be addressed, and that they need to assist with Lars' therapy by continuing to treat Bianca as if she were real. During this time, Margo has begun to date another co-worker, which silently bothers Lars.

Eventually, Lars introduces Bianca as his girlfriend to his co-workers and various townspeople. Sympathetic to Lars, the town inhabitants react to the doll as if she were real, however in order to reduce Lars' dependence on her, they start filling her "schedule" with social events and volunteer programs. This also has the effect of forcing Lars to interact more with the townspeople. When Margo reveals to Lars she has broken up with her boyfriend, Lars agrees to go bowling with her while Bianca attends a school board meeting; later they are joined by more friends. The evening represents Lars beginning to bond with others and communicate more socially.

One morning, Gus and Karin are awakened by a panicked Lars, alarmed because Bianca is unresponsive, and she is rushed to the hospital. After Lars tells Gus and Karin that Bianca is dying, Berman explains that Lars alone has made these decisions about Bianca's future. The news spreads through town, and the neighbors come to realize what this means in relation to Lars' recovery. During a last visit to the lake, Gus and Karin witness a despondent Lars in the water with a "dying" Bianca.

Bianca's funeral is well-attended by the townspeople; after Bianca is buried, Lars and Margo linger at the gravesite. When Margo suggests they catch up with the others, Lars asks if she would like to take a walk. She accepts.

Allusions

Lars has aspects of a modern Pygmalion, and the film adapts the legend as a romantic comedy.[3] Pygmalion falls in love with his statue of a beautiful woman: “He often felt the statue with his hands, to see if it was flesh, or ivory still, and then no longer admitted it was ivory.”[4] While Aphrodite answers Pygmalion's prayers and brings the statue Galatea to life, the story of Lars instead concludes with the doll Bianca being mourned as though she had been alive.

Cast

Production

In The Real Story of Lars and the Real Girl, a special feature on the DVD release of the film, screenwriter Nancy Oliver reveals the inspiration for her script was an actual website, RealDoll.com, which is featured in the film. While researching "weird websites" for an article, Oliver found RealDoll.com. She wrote the script in 2002.[5] The script was the third-ranked screenplay in The Black List in 2005.[6][7]

The film, set in the US state of Wisconsin, was filmed with a $12 million budget on location in Alton, Elora, King Township, Toronto, Uxbridge, and Whitevale, all located in the Canadian province of Ontario.[8][9]

Film credits include Rosalie MacKintosh as "Bianca wrangler" and Karly Bowen as "assistant Bianca wrangler."[10][11]

Release

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2007, before going into limited release in the U.S. on October 12, 2007. It initially opened on seven screens in New York City, New York; and Los Angeles, California, and earned $90,418 on its opening weekend. It later expanded to 321 theaters and remained in release for 147 days, earning $5,972,884 domestically and $5,320,639 in other markets for a worldwide box-office total of $11,293,663.[2]

The film was featured at the Austin Film Festival, the Heartland Film Festival, the Torino Film Festival, the Glasgow Film Festival, and the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival.[12]

Critical reception

Lars and the Real Girl received positive reviews from critics, especially for Gosling's performance.[13] On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 81%, based on reviews from 140 critics, and an average rating of 7.2/10. The site's critical consensus states, "Lars and the Real Girl could've so easily been a one-joke movie. But the talented cast, a great script, and direction never condescend to its character or the audience."[14] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 32 reviews.[15]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film three and a half out of four and observed, "The film wisely never goes for even one moment that could be interpreted as smutty or mocking. There are so many ways [it] could have gone wrong that one of the film's fascinations is how adroitly it sidesteps them. Its weapon is absolute sincerity. It has a kind of purity to it."[16]

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle called the film "a gentle comedy, offbeat but never cute, never lewd and never going for shortcut laughs that might diminish character."[17]

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said, "American self-nostalgia is a dependable racket, and if the filmmakers had pushed into the realm of nervous truth, had given Lars and the town folk sustained shadows, not just cute tics and teary moments, it might have worked. Instead the film is palatable audience bait of average accomplishment that superficially recalls the plain style of Alexander Payne, but without any of the lacerating edges or moral ambiguity."[18]

Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times described it as "the sweetest, most innocent, most completely enjoyable film around," "a film whose daring and delicate blend of apparent irreconcilables will sweep you off your feet if you're not careful. The creators of this film were fiercely determined not to go so much as a millimeter over the line into sentiment, tawdriness or mockery. It's the rare film that is the best possible version of itself, but Lars fits that bill."[19]

Lou Lumenick of the New York Post awarded the film three out of four, calling it "an offbeat comedy that plays as if Preston Sturges came back to life and collaborated with the Coen Brothers on an updated version of the Jimmy Stewart film Harvey (1950). He added the script "eschews cheap laughs for character-driven humanist comedy, and is sensitively directed by Craig Gillespie."[20]

Alissa Simon of Variety stated, "Craig Gillespie's sweetly off-kilter film plays like a Coen brothers riff on Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon tales, defying its lurid premise with a gentle comic drama grounded in reality ... what's fresh and charming is the way the characters surrounding the protagonist also grow as they help him through his crisis."[21]

The film has received favorable reviews from Christian faith-based media,[22] and has been recommended as an instructional tool and a means for opening a dialogue on tolerance.[23]

Accolades

Award Date of ceremony Category Recipients Result
Academy Awards February 24, 2008 Best Original Screenplay Nancy Oliver Nominated
Chicago Film Critics Association December 13, 2007 Best Actor Ryan Gosling Nominated
Most Promising Director Craig Gillespie Nominated
Critics' Choice Awards January 7, 2007 Best Actor Ryan Gosling Nominated
Best Screenplay Nancy Oliver Nominated
Golden Globe Awards January 13, 2008 Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Ryan Gosling Nominated
Humanitas Prize September 17, 2008 Feature Film Nancy Oliver Won
National Board of Review January 15, 2008 Top Ten Films Lars and the Real Girl Won
Best Original Screenplay Nancy Oliver Won
Satellite Awards December 16, 2007 Best Film – Musical or Comedy Lars and the Real Girl Nominated
Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Ryan Gosling Won
Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Emily Mortimer Nominated
Best Original Screenplay Nancy Oliver Nominated
Screen Actors Guild Awards January 27, 2008 Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role Ryan Gosling Nominated
St. Louis Film Critics Association December 24, 2007 Best Film – Musical or Comedy Lars and the Real Girl Nominated
Best Actor Ryan Gosling Nominated
Best Screenplay Nancy Oliver Nominated
Writers Guild of America Awards February 9, 2008 Best Original Screenplay Nancy Oliver Nominated

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Lars and the Real Girl (2007) - Financial Information". The Numbers.
  2. 1 2 3 "Lars and the Real Girl". Box Office Mojo. IMDb Inc. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
  3. ↑ "A Modern Myth of Perfection: The Pygmalion Story in Contemporary Film and Culture". Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection. May 2015. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  4. ↑ Ovid (2017). Metamorphoses. Translated by Simpson, Michael. University of Massachusetts Press.
  5. ↑ Wloszczyna, Susan (October 8, 2007). "'Lars' star Bianca isn't just your average movie actress". USA Today. Archived from the original on October 25, 2014. Retrieved November 15, 2014.
  6. ↑ "Hollywood's Black List : Planet Money". NPR.org. July 10, 2020.
  7. ↑ "THE BLACK LIST".
  8. ↑ IMDB "Filming Locations for Lars and the Real Girl"
  9. ↑ Goodman, Lee-Anne (2008). "The Real Deal". AOL. Archived from the original on July 7, 2012. Retrieved November 15, 2014.
  10. ↑ IMDB "Crazy Credits for Lars and the Real Girl"
  11. ↑ "The love of his life is a real doll". The Vancouver Sun. 2 November 2007. Archived from the original on 10 November 2012. Retrieved November 12, 2021.
  12. ↑ "Lars and the Real Girl: Release Info". IMDb. Retrieved November 12, 2021.
  13. ↑ "'Lars and the Real Girl' Breaks a Wooden Heart". The Washington Post. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  14. ↑ "Lars and the Real Girl". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved August 6, 2021.
  15. ↑ "Lars and the Real Girl Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 10 April 2012.
  16. ↑ Ebert, Roger (October 18, 2007). "Oh, you beautiful doll". Chicago Sun-Times. Accessed April 24, 2010.
  17. ↑ LaSalle, Mick (October 19, 2007). "Review: Lars and the Real Girl – A (Platonic) Love Story" San Francisco Chronicle. Accessed April 24, 2010.
  18. ↑ Dargis, Manohla (October 12, 2007). A Lonely Guy Plays House With a Mail-Order Sex Doll "Lars and the Real Girl (2007)". The New York Times. Accessed April 24, 2010.
  19. ↑ Turan, Kenneth (12 October 2007). "Lars and the Real Girl – The Movie Centers a Delightful, Capra-esque Story Around a Most Prurient Prop". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 12, 2021.
  20. ↑ Lumenick, Lou (October 12, 2007). "Midwestern Love for Dummies". New York Post. Accessed April 24, 2010.
  21. ↑ Simon, Alissa (September 11, 2007). "Lars and the Real Girl". Variety. Retrieved 2021-09-11.
  22. ↑ Chattaway, Peter T. (October 12, 2007). "Lars and the Real Girl". Christianity Today.
  23. ↑ Simmons, Rachel (July 28, 2009). "Teaching Tolerance with Lars and the Real Girl". RosalindWiseman.com. Archived from the original on 2011-07-15. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
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