MIT Lecture Series Committee

October 12, 2012

Rated PG-13
106 minutes

view trailer

format: 35mm

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

FREE admission, sponsored by Active Minds @ MIT. There will be a discussion between showings, moderated by MIT clinician Daniel Debowy. The first 50 people at the 6pm show will get FREE DINNER during the discussion, catered by b.good!

Lars (Ryan Gosling) and Gus (Paul Schneider) are the grown children of a father who died recently and a mother who died giving birth to Lars. But as brothers, they couldn't be more different. While Gus lives in the family home and has a loving wife (Emily Mortimer) and a child on the way, Lars leads a more reclusive existence in the family's garage, hiding in plain sight of his small, wintry hometown. Painfully shy and eccentric, Lars fails to recognize that his co-worker Margo (Kelli Garner) has a major crush on him. Instead, he picks up on a casual reference made by his cubicle mate, who mentions a website where you can order life-sized, anatomically correct sex dolls. But instead of seeing a sex object, Lars sees in this doll a potential life partner and the only kind of social "peer" he can relate to. So Lars orders a doll, whom he names Bianca, and begins treating her with utmost gentlemanly respect -- as though she's his real-life, flesh-and-blood girlfriend. As he begins bringing Bianca with him everywhere he goes, the townspeople have to find just the right balance between supporting Lars' unusual romance and trying to introduce him to a more conventional partner. Lars and the Real Girl was written by Six Feet Under scribe Nancy Oliver and directed by Mr. Woodcock's Craig Gillespie. [www.allrovi.com]

Every scene that could be played for pathos uncorks great laughs, while those that could turn crass or silly are compassionate. On every level, this is a labor of love.
      -- Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune. Read this review.