Movie Review-Lars and the Real Girl

Lars and the Real Girl is the touching story of a man who falls in love with a love doll. It is difficult to do too much of a synopsis of this film as you either give too much away or you make it sound frivolous and in many ways kind of perverted, which it isn't. The film is portrayed as a oddball comedy which it is for the most part. It is also a story of a man and his trying to overcome his own insecurities and social anxiety and a film about one community coming together to help him. So I will just use the description I have, it is about a man who falls in love with a love doll and then tell you to just rent it and know that there is so much more to this film.

The acting by Ryan Gosling, who plays Lars, is amazing. He has to be able to convince us as an audience that he has this social anxiety and then as the movie progresses he has to interact with an inanimate object as though she were real. You feel for him and his attempts at normality in a very difficult life. The rest of the cast is amazing as well. It is hard to single out his brother, sister in law, the doctor who helps him and a whole town of people that allow him to feel normal and that encourage him to find ways to become more active in the community. After watching the extras for this film, I appreciated it even more as each of the actors and the director and writer talked about how it was a team effort to make this film and yet the script was not altered very much. This is a film about love and about how important human connections are. We all need connections in our lives and this is just one film's way of showing these connections.