Lars and the Real Girl

I've become a firm believer in the idea that the less you know about a movie before you see it, the better.  We went and saw Hancock this week, and I'm glad we saw it on sneak preview night, before the word got out that Will Smith is actually one of the aliens he fought in Men in Black. (oops!)  Just kidding.  Seriously, movies like this are only better the less you know going in.  Unfortunately, studio execs think that they can only get people into the movies if they give away most of the plot, except maybe once in a while the surprise ending. And unfortunately, that may be true to a great extent. I realize that the less you know about a movie, the more likely you are to walk into a real stinker, but I think it's worth the gamble. Because then it makes a great movie so much more wonderful. Especially if the things you wouldn't have known about from watching the trailer make it so much more enjoyable.

Lars and the Real Girl is a lot like that.  We pulled up Comcast's On Demand to watch a movie and we had a choice between this and Be Kind Rewind.  I'm sure that's funny, but Lars and the Real Girl was worth jumping into without knowing anything about it. It's enough to say that it's a great film.  It's a movie about people.  A movie that makes you think.  But not too much - it makes you laugh, too.  If you get a chance to see it, see it.  It doesn't have any action.  And the humor is subtle...not the getting-kicked-in-the-crotch kind.  But the humor is so much more beautiful and funny if you don't really know anything about it going in.  It's about a social introvert (Ryan Gosling) dealing with being socially introverted.  His sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer) does what she can to draw him out of his shell, but nothing seems to work.  Until...

But that would be giving the movie away.  See it.  Before you see the trailer.  Before you look at the website. Before you know anything more about it.  That's how we saw it, and it made it so much better.