Lars and the Real Girl

So there's this Lars guy, who buys a "love-doll" online and when it arrives he starts pretending she is his girlfriend. Dresses her up, takes her out to meet friends, to dinner, to church to the lake. Fights with her. Sleeps with her literally, not sexually, or at least we're not told that: most we see, there is a passionate kiss, late in the relationship. (By the time this happens, everyone except the viewer seems to have accepted his premise, that Bianca is real, so no need for quote signs around 'relationship', above.)

Though it's hard not to find the whole premise inciting I felt it was undermined by the whole far-fetchedness of the thing, sort of like one of those less successful, more recent, Simpsons episodes where the whole Springfield embarks on some sort of farce only to fool Homer or Bart or Marge. At least, in the end, the Simpsons writers have the sense of humor to laugh at their own expense pointing out the absurd. If nothing else, they can always use the "it's a cartoon for God's sake" defense. Not much humor in Lars and the real girl, though the absurd of the situations does invite smiles and even a laughter or two. Stranger yet, this far-fetchyness undermines the premise both from outside and from within: from outside, because, when even the 911 and the ambulance people seem to agree to play their part in the delusion of Lars, well, it's like I am asked to find and suspend even the very last shred of disbelief, and I don't know about you, but those last shreds are Peskiness Incarnate, harder to find and get hold of than the watermelon seeds. The only help the movie provides with this is to suggest this all takes place in a small town, where everyone knows everyone… Ok, I might buy that, in the spirit of the holidays, I suppose.

But the real problem with the
whole damn town bending backwards to "play" with Lars is that it challenges the core idea of the movie; see, as I see it, this is that our going through life is a series of stories, of rituals, is the way Lars puts it, whose truth depends in a large measure of our say so. Yes, there are things no matter how many people believe, will not become true. But other things are less finicky. Gather enough believers, and you have yourself a bona fide "truth". Things having to do with feelings, are particularly prone to this, and relationships are merely a public (so even less "true", because "performed") version of those truths we can just conjure up by believing in them. So, if that's the premise, and if Lars's story is meant to show how someone's being in love/a relationship is ultimately a function of that someone's (and of many non-innocent bystanders') belief to the effect, then what is lacking from the whole ritual Lars is building up for himself and for his friends is the friction resulting when people do not approve of that relationship. There's little of that in the beginning, but not nearly enough. Someone should fall out with Lars for his chosen love, someone should tell him she's not good enough for him (the opposite might not work too well I suppose). Someone should not "play" with Lars for this ritual to be truly accurate. As it is, all we have is a relationship similar to what we have at the end of fairy tales, or Hollywood tales, when evil and obstacles have been conveniently disposed with. I don't like that as an ending, you can imagine how I feel about it as a premise.