If you want to watch a sweet drama that commits you to think outside the box, then Craig Gillespie’s (I, Tonya, The Finest Hours) might be that secret little hidden movie that might be for you. Starring Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine, The Nice Guys), this tender, sweet film is like nothing you’ve ever seen. And if the premise scares you away because it looks stupid, watch the trailer. If the trailer still doesn’t do it for you, read what some top reviewers said. If that doesn’t work, then trust me a little. “The Ryan Gosling Dates a Sex Toy” movie is not what Lars and the Real Girl is about. At all.

Gosling plays a woefully bashful young man named Lars Lindstrom. He has social anxiety to the Nth degree. He does not like to be touched, and conversations with him can be awkward at best. When he doesn’t know what to say or what to do, he quickly looks for his escape. He is highly functional as a member of society, working an office job where his quirkiness is toyed with but generally accepted. But each night, he retreats to the adjacent room to the garage/cabin in the back of his family house (his mother and father died, but his brother

Gus and his wife Karin now occupy the place and call it home). Gus (Paul Schneider – The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Water for Elephants) is a caring brother who understands Lars’ nonconformity with societal standards. He knows his brother is abnormal, but that’s Lars. Karin (Emily Mortimer – Transsiberian, Shutter Island) is more interested in getting Lars comfortable in his own skin, acclimated with the local community, or, at minimum, getting him into the family house for dinner sometimes. Unfortunately, the family meal offerings are usually rejected. On the few occasions that he does accept, the conversation is unnatural, and Lars seems ready to leave just as quickly as he arrives.

Lars certainly has difficulty relating or even interacting with his family, co-workers, and fellow attendees at his local church, which he goes to once a week. Karin makes Lars a priority to her and Gus. She wants to share her life with them, but Lars is constantly pushing them away with one false excuse or another. There is also a co-worker and member of Lars’s church named Margo (Kelli Garner – The Aviator, Thumbsucker) who is interested in him but whom Lars shoos away constantly so that he can spend time alone in his cabin.

But this all changes one day when Lars brings home a life-size vinyl love doll that he ordered online when a co-worker was looking up pornography on the Internet. Bianca is a paraplegic missionary of Brazilian and Danish blood, and Lars takes her everywhere in a wheelchair, as he explains. He has a reason for everything she does, including why she doesn’t talk, eat, or even move her head. He introduces her to Gus and Karin first and calls her his girlfriend. And they give Lars the exact look everyone else in the town does, which is complete disbelief. No one can believe that this is happening and that Lars needs a psychiatric evaluation. But a quick visit to their local doctor suggests that nothing is wrong with Lars and that Gus, Karin, and anyone else except Bianca as a normal person. And that’s what they do.

There’s not much wrong with Lars and the Real Girl. Its originality is off the hook. Its execution is even stronger. If anything, this movie moved a little too quickly (and the older I get, the rarer it is for me to say that about a film). Its 106-minute run time feels perfect, but the setup took longer than needed. The conclusion also feels slightly rushed, but not so much that I will criticize this part of it. However, we get to know Bianca so well throughout the movie and the relationship between her and Lars that we want that piece of the movie’s ending to last slightly longer.

Lars and the Real Girl is a top-five Ryan Gosling performance. It’s a shame that such a handful of people had seen this film, either because of its premise or because they didn’t know about it when it came out. The supporting performances help accentuate the idea that Bianca could be treated like a real person and the loving support Lars receives from the close-knit community. Gillespie directed a gem of a movie with a movie that really could have gone either way. In the wrong hands, it could have been a disaster. But it was in the hands of someone who cared about creating a kindhearted story about anxiety and isolation and the different mechanisms we might use to get ourselves out of it.

Gosling’s Lars was such an interesting character that there could have been numerous plots that would have worked for this very idiosyncratic individual. He does so well not to be too gloomy, odd, stale, or bizarre. He’s a perfect mix of so many traits that he comes across as charming when so many other actors might have been creepy. That’s how good Gosling was at creating his character before we even met Bianca.

Plot 10/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 8.5/10
Acting 9.5/10
Screenplay 10/10
Directing 9.5/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 9/10
Hook and Reel 8.5/10
Universal Relevance 9/10
92%

A-

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