‘Real Life’ grown-up fun

If what you’re looking for in film is vampires running amok or maniacs slicing and dicing quivering flesh, you never have far to go these days. But if what you want is a star-driven sophisticated romantic comedy that is successfully aimed at actual adults, the wait can seem like forever. Until now.

“Dan in Real Life” is such a film. Starring contemporary comedy giant Steve Carell and Oscar-winning French high-culture heroine Juliette Binoche, a coupling as unlikely as it is delicious, “Dan” offers the most pleasing kind of unforced charm as it uses a terrific plot device to examine the conflicts between family and romance as well as the joy and pain of being in love.

Many of the good things in “Dan” stem from director Peter Hedges, who debuted with the underrated “Pieces of April” starring Katie Holmes. Hedges, who wrote the novel and screenplay for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” and the Oscar-nominated script for “About a Boy,” felt such a kinship with Pierce Gardner’s original script he not only did a rewrite, he offered himself as the director.

As his work testifies, Hedges specializes in reality-based comedy with a hidden heart. Determined, he has said, “not to take shortcuts with people,” Hedges doesn’t let humor interfere with emotional complexity. He sees his characters’ flaws but, in an attitude we all could emulate, adopts a tolerant, accepting attitude toward them.

In “Dan,” Hedges oversees something of a departure for both of his leads. Carell, one of today’s hottest comedy actors, handles with aplomb a transition that has overmatched his peers, managing to be both funny as well as a credible romantic lead. As for Binoche, usually found in more ethereal roles (that Oscar was for “The English Patient”), she’s successfully made herself into an approachable, everyday version of the woman of every man’s dreams.

What united both actors, Binoche related in an interview, was a shared viewpoint. The first time she met Carell, she says, “He said, ‘I don’t want this to be cute.’ I looked him right in the eye and said, ‘There’s no cute in here. There’s no cute coming.’ ” And, thankfully, there is not.

Original screenwriter Gardner said he was inspired by his personal history of attending massive family reunions. What’s especially pleasing about the crowd at the Burns family gathering in a big old Rhode Island house near the ocean is that the family members clearly like each other’s company. Which doesn’t mean, of course, that certain individuals don’t have problems.

Dan Burns (Carell) is in the classic physician-heal-thyself mode: He’s a newspaper advice columnist who finds himself stumped by his own life. His initial difficulty, however, is not of his own making: He’s yet to recover from the death four years earlier of his cherished wife.

Aside from his column, Dan is fully occupied raising his three daughters. Eight-year-old Lily (Marlene Lawston) is cute as can be, 15-year-old Cara (Brittany Robertson) is boy crazy, and 17-year-old Jane (Alison Pill) thinks she should be allowed to drive. In fact, Dan has such a tendency to be overprotective that Jane has it right when she pointedly says he’s “a good father but sometimes a bad dad.”

When Dan takes the girls to his parents’ (Dianne Wiest and John Mahoney) for that family reunion, he’s so fussy his mother tells him “get lost -- it’s not a request.” He goes to a local emporium, the Book and Tackle Shop, where a winsome customer named Marie (Binoche) initially mistakes him for one of the staff.

There is a clear and immediate attraction between these two, and Hedges is especially good at capturing the combined awkwardness and sense of possibility of such a meeting. But that shyness is nothing compared with the discomfort that results when Dan returns to the house and is unexpectedly reintroduced to Marie as the new serious girlfriend of his brother Mitch (Dane Cook).

This is a classic screwball predicament, as Dan and Marie have to make believe they’re strangers when they might be falling in love. Dan is really bad at handling the strain, and ends up acting like a dolt for reasons only the audience knows. Carell, more adept at despair than might be expected, is especially good at this misery-loves-comedy predicament.

Though it might sound like this scenario would be limiting, “Dan in Real Life,” aided by a melodic score by singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche, is good at ringing numerous changes out of the plot, including a delightful cameo appearance by Emily Blunt. You could do worse than quote Marie in the bookstore, who says she is looking for “something human and funny that could sneak up and surprise you.” So are we all, and now it is here.

kenneth.turan@latimes.com

MPAA rating: PG-13, for some innuendo. Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes. In general release.