A RealDoll is a hyper-realistic, life-sized sex doll; a popular pastime among contemporary internet users is reading about RealDolls and being amused and weirded out. (Search Nerve for five or six hundred articles on the subject.) In Lars and the Real Girl, Ryan Gosling plays shy, lonely Lars Lindstrom, a small-town office worker who drives his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) into a panic of overacting by ordering a RealDoll as a companion. But Gus's wife Karin (Emily Mortimer) insists that Gus and the other townsfolk accept Lars's choices, and their kindness slowly opens Lars's heart.
The script is by Nancy Oliver, who wrote several episodes of Six Feet Under; it keeps the warmth of that show, while jettisoning most of its pain. Whether you find it moving or cloying will probably depend on how much down-to-earth, small-town decency you can handle in two hours. As you may guess, I found it slightly cloying, but by no means without its merits. The austere, wintry photography is lovely, for one thing. And Gosling is fantastic, as he's been so often in recent years. Another actor might've made this character into a pitiable sad sack, but Gosling gives him a childlike, playful grin that peeks out repeatedly from behind his mustache, suggestive of an inner life stranger and more wonderful than the rest of the movie can show us. Ryan Gosling — one to watch, if you're not watching already. — Peter Smith
