For those of you expecting the “40-Year Old Virgin” or “Office” versions of Steve Carell, save your ten dollars or prepare to be disappointed. Dan In Real Life is not the side-splitting comedy that Carell has made a career out of, but rather a “dramedy” that fails to deliver on the latter part of its compound.Carell plays Dan Burns, a lonely widower struggling to raise three daughters who are all going through their various unappetizing stages of adolescence. Funny stuff, right? While Dan struggles with his family life and lack of a love life, he ironically earns his living by helping others solve their problems as a successful advice columnist.During an annual family retreat to his parents house Dan meets a lady during a chance encounter at a bookstore. Despite Dan being clearly off his game, he manages to finagle a phone number from the woman and returns home feeling pretty good about himself. This feeling is fleeting however as Dan soon finds out that the woman he met, Marie (Juliette Binoche), is in a serious relationship with his brother Mitch (Dane Cook).The rest of the movie Dan deals with this lost opportunity as a five-year old emerging from a toy store empty handed would. Dan sulks about the family home, ruins dinnertimes with passive aggressive animosity towards his brother and sucks the joy out of a talent show with a serenade scene that is painfully uncomfortable to watch.The problem with Dan In Real Life, aside from the lack of laughs, is that Dan isn’t a very sympathetic character. This should never be the case for your story’s protagonist, but Carell comes across as narcissistic and borderline annoying on his quest to stab his own brother in the back. A natural comedic talent like Carrel is wasted in such a role.Another problem with the film is its painfully obvious plot. In retrospect if I had paid more attention to the trailer than quotes from critics telling me how great the movie is, I would’ve been able to piece together the plot and save myself two hours of boredom. Let’s just put it this way, it’s not called Mitch In Real Life…After spending ten dollars of another person’s money to watch this movie, I felt cheated. I watched this film under false pretenses believing I was going to watch Brick Tamland from Anchorman in a comedic laughfest, but ended up sitting through nearly two hours of a “chick flick” only because I didn’t finish my bag of candy before the end credits.