Lars and the Real Girl: Critic Reviews

Will no one talk to Lars honestly about the pitfalls of dating a golem?

Lars and the Real Girl is part comedy, part tragedy and 100 percent pure calculation.

Lars and the Real Girl is a tenderly observed and affecting Capra-esque fable that is well-acted and gently funny.

Gosling's performance is a small miracle, not only because he's so completely open as a man who's essentially shut off, but because he changes and grows so imperceptibly before our eyes.

Lars and the Real Girl is poised on the line between earnestness and farce.

Working with a doll can't be easy, but Gosling actually makes it feel emotionally real.

It's nothing less than a miracle that the director, Craig Gillespie, and the writer, Nancy Oliver, have been able to make such an endearing, intelligent and tender comedy from a premise that, in other hands, might sustain a five-minute sketch on TV.

Often howlingly funny, and the actors are a treat.

Only after the movie is over do you realize what a balancing act it was, what risks it took, what rewards it contains.

You'll pardon me if I feeling like urping just a tiny bit at screenwriter Nancy Oliver's blend of pathos and heartland condescension.

Both hilarious and poignant, with a Capraesque humanity that caught me completely off guard.

The central gimmick of the film remains just that -- a gimmick -- as genuine emotion gives way to shaggy-dog shtick.

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.

It's the script by Nancy Oliver, the very idea of the thing, that steals your heart. Kink has never felt so sweet and decent.

Sweet, moving and heartfelt aren't necessarily the first words that come to mind when describing the tender tale of a young man and his sex doll, yet all three apply to Lars and the Real Girl.

Under Mr. Gillespie's admirably directed seriousness of tone, the performers, particularly Mr. Gosling, Ms. Mortimer, Mr. Schneider, Ms. Clarkson, Ms. Gardner and Mr. Reid, never miss a beat.

Tenderly depicting his characters' human foibles with low-key visual humor, Gillespie never condescends or goes for an easy joke.

The script by Six Feet Under writer Nancy Oliver eschews cheap laughs for character-driven humanist comedy.

Lars and the Real Girl remains suspended somewhere between perversity and pap, with only Gosling hinting at the mingling that might have been.

...we're surprised to find that it's possible to feel a real emotional attachment to an anatomically correct girl made of quality plastic.

Craig Gillespie's 'Lars and the Real Girl' Is an Off-Beat, '70s-Like Charmer that Could Have Been the Third Side of a Bud Cort Trilogy

A sweet little fable about how a delusional man-child is helped by the loving ministrations of his family and community, the kind of throwback flick where human nature is seen as inherently good -- a notion so quaint that it feels damn near buoyant.

The movie is convinced that its man-loves-mannequin premise is uplifting, when actually it's just kinda gross.