Pun Salad

Why, yes. This was my second Patricia Clarkson movie in a row. Good catch.

Lars (Ryan Gosling) has serious psychological problems, living alone in a converted detached garage, next to the family house currently occupied by his brother and sister-in-law. He's become withdrawn, gravely afraid of interaction with other people, including physical contact. So he goes ahead and buys this sex doll off the Internet, and …

I know. This doesn't sound like a very good movie. But the critics liked it, and so I decided to check it out. It's very good! The actors are uniformly excellent. The (Oscar-nominated) script is clever, taking several unexpected twists with ease.

Credulity is strained somewhat. The inhabitants of Lars's small, apparently Midwestern, town are uniformly decent and supportive, which might be just a tad romanticized. Lars's mental illness is only slightly more debilitating than that of Elwood P. Dowd's in Harvey. (Which, come to think of it, would make a pretty good double feature with this movie.)

[Note: the Pun Salad commercial sellout continues. The DVD box is now an "Amazon Associates" link, which will cut me in if you click on it and buy the DVD. Sorry.]