I love Ryan Gosling. I like him from the commercials of the Notebook (that’s right, commercials. I’ve wanted to see it for a while, but never gotten around to it for the same reason explain in my Enchanted post) and I haven’t even seen him in Half Nelson, so really this mancrush is based on Young Hercules, which was an amazingly good Fox Kids daily afternoon show from Saban, which also did Power Rangers. Ryan’s 14 days older than me, so it’s not like I was so little boy when this all happened- Young Hercules ran about 10 years ago.
In Lars and the Real Girl, Gosling stars as the titular character Lars, a man who buys a plastic doll to become his girlfriend. Delusional, he treats her (uh, it) as a real person while the small town he lives in struggles with accepting his condition. Even though I complained against Juno because I thought its plot was unrealistic, the situation here with the town and the overall plot is yet somehow realistic. Although the town is uncomfortable with his mental state, they grow to accept the situation because they care so much about him. The acceptance from the town grows gradually, and though it’s obvious Lars has mental issues (the movie does go into why he may have them), you can see his mental growth and recovery over the movie, and it’s amazing to see.
One one side, because I think the world is normally not that great of a place for those who are just not so normal….especially in America, the supposed homeland of tolerance and freedom, you might feel if you were to read a plot synopsis of this, how the movie progresses, just that it would never happen, but when you’re watching the movie, you truly believe in it. The characters are real, with depth and flaws, and I think that the movie stars in a small town, rather than more “modern” America, could have something to do with its believability as well.
I gave the movie 8/10 on IMDB.
Tags: mancrush, Movies, Reviews, ryan gosling, young hercules
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