Lars and the Real Girl Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		2.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Lars and the Real Girl Blu-ray Movie Review

There’s not much competition, but this is easily the sweetest film about a sex doll ever.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater April 14, 2011

At the heart of Lars and the Real Girl is a compelling “what-if” scenario: What if, instead of dismissing the crackpot delusions of the mentally ill, we went along with them out of kindness? What if we nurtured their absurd fantasies in the hopes that, by doing so, we might help them work through their internal issues and eventually embrace reality? While this tactic isn’t new to fiction or filmmaking—it often turns up in horror movies about demonic possession, where science-minded doctors suggest the rite of exorcism as a kind of shock treatment—the idea, as a narrative device and psychological conceit, has rarely been as gracefully or touchingly used as it is here. The film’s premise—a lonely man falls in love with a life-sized sex doll—may seem to promise raunchy humor and a seedy, leering tone, but writer Nancy Oliver and director Craig Gillespie (now helming 2011’s Fright Night remake) turn Lars and the Real Girl into something entirely unexpected: a serio-comedy that’s touching, darkly funny, and humanity-affirming.

Lars and the Real Girl

Ryan Gosling plays Lars Lindstrom, a quiet 27-year-old loner who’s literally painfully shy—he feels physical discomfort whenever his skin is touched. (A trait that suggests Asperger’s syndrome, although this is never explicitly stated.) Lars lives in a kind of mother-in-law apartment in the garage of the family home he inherited when his father died, while his older brother, Gus (Paul Schneider), stays in the main house with his expectant wife, Karin (Emily Mortimer), who frets constantly about Lars’ wellbeing. She’s not alone. The entire town—which sits in some rural corner of the upper mid-west, Minnesota, perhaps—regards Lars with a mix of pity and compassion, hoping he’ll find love before it’s too late. It’s not like he doesn’t have options; a friendly church lady (Nancy Beatty) is always trying to set him up, and one of his co-workers, Margo (Kelli Garner), is frequently dropping quirky, flirty signals. Lars, however, seems caught in an awkwardly self-aware state of arrested development, and he has no idea how to normally interact with others. Cue the life-sized, fully articulated sex toy, which Lars orders after his pervy cubicle-mate shows him the RealDoll website. (An actual company that agreed to be featured in the film. One wonders how many sales Real Girl netted them.) Six weeks later, his $6,000 steel-jointed silicone companion arrives in an enormous crate. Lars is uncharacteristically giddy. He tells Gus and Karin that he’s met a girl on the internet, Bianca, a Danish-Brazilian former missionary and paraplegic who doesn’t know much English. They’re surprised and supportive…until Lars brings Bianca over for dinner and begins talking with her as if she were an actual person.

This premise asks the audience to swallow a lot—can we really believe Lars actually sees Bianca as a flesh-and-blood being?—but Oliver and Gillespie make the unlikely oddity more palatable by placing Lars and the Real Girl in a tonal area about halfway between sheer realism and utter fairytale. It helps that the film never once stoops to the lurid, cheap, or obvious gags you’d expect from a movie featuring a sex doll. Lars’ intentions are almost embarrassingly pure. Deeply religious, he doesn’t want to give the wrong impression by having Bianca stay over in the garage, so he asks Gus and Karin if she can “sleep” in main house’s “pink room,” a bedroom that used to belong to his mother, who died when he was young. (The Freudian associations just keep on coming.) Gus is flabbergasted. Karin seems on the verge of tears. With no idea what to do, they turn to Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson), a family doctor/psychologist who suggests that they play along with Lars’ delusion, and encourage everyone they know to do the same. And this is where Lars and the Real Girl goes from being just another wacky indie drama to something more—a film that’s both emotionally insightful and hopeful about the capacity of people to show genuine kindness to those in need, even if it means accommodating a love doll at the Sunday morning church service. The community rallies in support, and while it would be criminal to reveal any more, I’ll just say that Oliver and Gillespie build a convincing case for the nature of Lars’ illness, and they bring us to a satisfying conclusion that’s tender, sad, and sweet without ever becoming cloying.

This is no easy feat. It’s not hard to be cynical or shocking, but a film that can express the potential for goodness in humanity without coming across as cornball or preachy is a rare thing indeed. I’d attribute this to a combination of Oliver’s sharp, perceptive script—her previous credits include a writing stint on HBO’s Six Feet Under, which should give you a loose idea of what’s in store for you—and Gillespie’s ability to keep the film’s extremes in check, to not let it get too ha-ha funny or morbidly serious. There are a few big laughs, but most of the humor is of the wryly- awkward variety. And even at its most dramatic—a big fight between Lars and Karin, who feels her brother-in-law isn’t appreciative of all the people around him have done to help—the cast never rises to histrionics. Paul Schneider is a pitch-perfect older brother, alternately amused and baffled, and he’s at his best in a scene where he uncomfortably tries to explain to Lars what it means to be a man. British Shutter Island actress Emily Mortimer, sporting a fine American accent, wordlessly conveys great warmth and concern. And Patricia Clarkson—who was also featured in Martin Scorsese’s asylum thriller—is a convincing voice of wisdom and reason. But it’s Ryan Gosling that makes the film, never going for farce or overplaying his character’s wallflower nebbishness. You want his Lars to push through this existential quandary and find love with the almost equally oddball Margo, and if we don’t necessary get the quintessential happy ending, the film leaves us on a moment of hope. Bianca, for her part, does a terrific job staring off into space and looking strangely sentient. At times she almost seems like one of those Jesus portraits, with the eyes that follow you around the room.

Lars and the Real Girl Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

MGM continues their streak of pushing catalog titles onto Blu-ray with severely outdated-looking transfers. Lars and the Real Girl sports a 1080p/AVC encode, but I'm guessing it was sourced from an old high definition master for the film's DVD release, because, frankly, the image exhibits an issue that most studios have wised up to by now: edge enhancement. The artificial sharpening is simply out of control here, leaving many outlines with sometimes white, sometimes black haloes. It's distracting, it doesn't make the picture look any clearer, and—in high definition—it actually makes it look much worse, especially if you've got a large screen. I really don't think we'd see this if the film had been given an all-new, specifically-prepared-for-Blu- ray transfer. On the plus side, edge enhancement's frequent companion—digital noise reduction—doesn't show up here, or at least not in excess. Grain looks natural, and the print is fairly clean, with only a few white specks popping up on occasion. Does the film look better here than it does on DVD? Marginally, but the rampant edge enhancement doesn't help and the encode lacks truly fine detail, as most textures—except in the tightest close-ups— have a murky, unresolved quality. Color is bleak and dominated by a grayish cast, but this is all part of the film's dim north-mid-western vibe. Contrast is a bit weak though, and I suspect that blacks could stand to be a bit darker and highlights brighter. Overall, this is a disappointing showing, and—in my opinion—not worth the upgrade from DVD.

Lars and the Real Girl Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There's really not much to say about the film's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, which may have well been in stereo, because there really isn't any substantial rear channel involvement. This is a quiet, dialogue-driven film, and most of the mix is located firmly up front and center. You'll hear very minimal ambience in the rear channels on rare occasions, and there are a few instances where music is panned into the surrounds—like the Talking Heads song during the party scene—but that's about it. Still, there's nothing worth complaining about here. David Torn's score sounds wonderful, the incidental music has adequate presence, and aside from a few spots when voices seem a hair low, dialogue is balanced, prioritized, and easy to understand.

Lars and the Real Girl Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scene - Bathtub (SD, 00:54): A single deleted scene graces the disc, and it's a minor one, showing Lars splashing some water on his face as he takes a fully-clothed bath with Bianca.
• The Real Story of Lars and the Real Girl (SD, 10:11): A short but welcome making-of documentary, featuring the usual assortment of interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and clips from the film.
• A Real Leading Lady (SD, 5:55): The film's director, screenwriter, and actors talk about Bianca as if she were a real person.
• Theatrical Trailer (1080p, 2:24)

Lars and the Real Girl Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I like Lars and the Real Girl—it's a strange, pleasingly optimistic film about mental illness, kindness, and community—but I'm disappointed with the lackluster disc MGM has put out for the film's Blu-ray debut. The audio is okay, and the special features are substantial—if short—but the film's high definition transfer is sub-par, and most likely recycled from an old master. If you don't yet own the film, this is probably the best way to watch it, but if the DVD is already in your collection, I don't think I'd bother upgrading.