MovieChat Forums > Lars and the Real Girl (2007) Discussion > (spoiler) I simply couldn't buy this fil...

(spoiler) I simply couldn't buy this film (and I don't mean purchase)

posted 13 years ago by caprica1999
15 replies | jump to latest

(spoilers)

I can't buy that someone could get away with calling an ambulance for a plastic doll at the risk of a real person dying at the same time (no matter how sweet the whole town was)

I can't buy a hospital would play along with this

I can't believe a priest with strong religious beliefs would make a mockery of a funeral in a church for a plastic doll

I can't believe that a burial plot, hallowed ground, would be used for a piece of plastic

I cannot believe than every single person would play along in this whole town. noone laughed and pointed. noone ridiculed him.

I categorically refuse to believe anything in this 1 note movie.

I groaned. From the first 15 minutes I knew the whole plot of this movie. Except I thought Bianca would have died in a fire and he starts to cry as he runs in to save her. Turns out it was a lake and he starts to cry.

Come on this was a tedious film with no suspension of disbelief

There was little to be convinced

It's funny a friend of mine was watching this film a couple years back. I heard the premise. Man loves a blowup doll and the entire script was laid out for me. Including the obligatory break down and cry scene at the end. Come one get real.

[–] tyshimah3 13 years ago

Okay, so I take it you didn't like the movie?

Well, I'm sure that there were other ambulances available in case of a "real" emergency. And it's not like they took her into surgery, they gave her an empty room with an empty bed.

I'll bet that you can bury anything, plastic or otherwise if you can afford it.
He didn't make a mockery of the church, in my opinion. Bianca was a member of the church, she participated in its activities, why wouldn't they have a service for her?

And people did ridicule him, but when saw that they were outnumbered by people who cared about Lars, they joined in.

You're making the movie entirely about Bianca. It was about Lars and how he dealt with his life and became delusional (or so they thought) and healed. He was still in pain from his own parents' death, especially his mother's.

**Michael.JACKSON**

[–] princessfaz 13 years ago

In a very very small town, the ambulance is rarely used.

[–] ASDampf 12 years ago

I agree with the poster 100%. The person who feebly tried to rebuttle is a moron. It's a plastic doll. The movie was predictable and boring. No one in their right mind would buy into any of this in real life. I understand that it's a movie, and the acting was actually great, but even top-notch acting can't save a film with a very weak premise. I mean, how did these actors even agree to do this film?

All in all I give this movie a 5/10, just because the acting actually wasn't bad. It was just too hard to believe. Period. And I'd like to thank all of the people who voted this movie above 5/10 so as to entice me to see it. Thanks for wasting my time!

[–] leah-sees 12 years ago

The town wasn't THAT small - it had a full hospital and a freakin' MALL.

I couldn't get into this movie, either. It was not funny enough to be a comedy (I get the idea of "subtle" humor but "subtle" does not equal "missing") and the very realisstic therapy scenes made it a drama - but it wasn't believable enough to be a drama. It fell completely flat to me. Too dramatic to be a comedy but too unbelievable to be a drama. A complete failure.

[–] Kathy_Fass 12 years ago

I don't agree. I think you're missing the point here. It's about family and friends and the love for one another... If it were my brother who was sick I would have done the same to help him...and I know for a fact most of his friends would too and come on...what CAN'T we do with money these days?! It's all about how far you would go to help the ones you love.

[–] Frodozhobbit 12 years ago

I agree. It was so dumb. Great acting though

[–] PsychoDingo 11 years ago

a film doesn't need to have suspension of disbelief. that's on you

and whatever you do, be sure to avoid watching Ghostbusters, Brazil, Walkabout, Blazing Saddles, Superman all of the Star Wars movies, and just about everything directed by Buñuel

Who cares about stairs? The main thing is ice cream.

[–] prettyevil6662000 11 years ago

Actually, suspension of disbelief is on the movie to create. An atmosphere has to be set up - which all of the other movies you listed did - that states, 'yes, weird stuff is going to happen, but it's normal in this world for x y and z'. That's what creates suspension of disbelief and allows a viewer to not care that ghosts exist in this movie or that a Kryptonian can fly because of a yellow sun.

This movie failed to set up a world where this could all be believably accepted, instead just showing us what appeared to be a normal town.

And as someone from a small town - 1000 people, at most - I can tell you 99% of them would laugh at you and cross the street to avoid you if you started doing this, no matter how much they previously liked you. And any of the priests at the 2 dozen or so churches in town would slap the crazy right out of you if you requested their services at the funeral of a sex doll (You would probably be able to purchase a burial plot though, because that's about money, hallowed ground or not).

That your idea of suspension of disbelief is sitting back and saying "Lol, I'm just going to go braindead for an hour and a half" is really sad. I'm glad more don't think like you. ...or maybe that phrase just doesn't mean what you think it means.

[–] AsYouWishButtercup 11 years ago

Don't forget she was also elected to city council!!!! Beyond stupid

[–] mediterrae 11 years ago

Not stupid at all. Just fun. Take a map and see for some presidents around the world, I bet Bianca could do it much better than many of them. And take a very small town and see how many people are able to undersand and help in some situations,that's the humorous part of it. The movie laughts at people and society. This has nothing to do about if an ambulance should be used or not to carry a doll,,,,just spread your minds a little.

[–] ksjazzguitar 11 years ago

I was thinking of it as a Lake Wobegone/Northern Exposer kind of thing - quirky town with quirky people that accept each other. And really, small towns are a lot more accepting than people give them credit for. Everyone knows everyone and there are no secrets. Don't mock your neighbor for his quirks because he knows yours. Plus, everyone in this town knew Lars and knew what a hard life he'd had. They knew that he wasn't hurting anyone and that this was his way of dealing with it. And the peer pressure may have worked in his favor.

I have no problem believing that the church would go along with it.

The ambulance was a bit hard to swallow, but then again, they were probably from the town too. And Dagmar might have warned them ahead of time. Still that part was a little hard to swallow, but I could ignore it.

[–] kay_cee_d 11 years ago

I guess everyone has a threshold on what they're willing to believe in a story. It doesn't make sense to me because its not that damn hard to take a movie as it is and adjust your expectations to fit the story. To allow yourself to enjoy and understand the movie as a metaphor as a story trying to say something and not necessarily trying to represent a truly 100% realistic situation. Sometimes...and bare with me please....writers create a heightened sense of reality in order to get across a point, not to just say "Here's a situation and here's what happened." That's not how storytelling goes, maybe that's how non-fiction goes, but typically storytelling is trying to get a point across.

[–] doughdee222 10 years ago

I agree with the OP. The events of the film is just too much.

Look, I'm a shy guy, shy to the bone. If I laid it all out you'd be surprised. But what Lars does is 2 or 3 major steps beyond what I ever could. And then what the town folk do to help him out... Again, too much.

Maybe if we were given some idea of who Lars is and his initial standing in the community it would be more palatable. A few lines about how his parents were beloved and how Lars was the High School valedictorian. How the whole town loved him before this. Something. But we're not shown any of that so it comes off as contrived.

As I was watching I too kept thinking about the expense of keeping the delusion going. How much are the doctor visits costing? Would the town charge for the ambulance and police call? Would the hospital charge for use of the emergency room? How about the casket and cemetery plot, that's gotta be worth something.

And then what happens later? Say 20 or 30 years later when Lars finds a box in the attic with pictures of Bianca and letters to her? What if he marries Margo and they have kids and the kids someday learn about this time period? They are going to have questions and might figure dad was nuts.

I think overall I enjoyed the film, but just marginally. Like eating a slice of cake, until you realize it's sugar upon sugar upon sugar and the kick sets it.

-Doughdee222

"Your approval fills me with shame."

[–] ksjazzguitar 10 years ago

"And then what happens later? Say 20 or 30 years later when Lars finds a box in the attic with pictures of Bianca and letters to her? What if he marries Margo and they have kids and the kids someday learn about this time period? They are going to have questions and might figure dad was nuts."

I remember reading about someone who had a schizophrenic break and imagined a whole family. That person later, with lots of treatment, got better and even got married for real. The person when asked about his imagined family was conflicted. While he understood intellectually that they never existed, the EXPERIENCE was real. What is the difference between a real experience and an imaginary experience? I'm sure we could define thought experiments that would challenge our ideas. I might even suggest that ALL experiences are imagined in the sense that they have to be filtered through and interpreted by our imagination. (Along these lines, there have been a lot of psychology experiments that show that memory is just a creative (imaginative) reconstruction of a decaying skeleton of an idea.

I like to think that his future family will just understand that even thought Bianca may not have been real to us, that the experience of her was very real to him.

As far as his standing in the community, I think that we're left to understand that this is a small town and everyone pretty much knows everyone. They all knew the family and its sad story. That is what I assumed. But, yes, perhaps this could have been at least a little more explicit.

Yes, I agree that the expense issue (doctor's visit, ambulance, coffin, burial, etc.) bothered me a little. But all stories have things that stretch credulity. (I remember arguing this point with someone that I knew was a big fan of the Matrix series. Uhhh.)

But as another poster said, we all have different abilities (or willingness) to suspend our disbelief. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it as much as I did. I'm sure you found something else to enjoy. What is that old quote, "If it's art, it's not for everyone. If it's for everyone, it's not art." Anything that tries something new is going to cause disagreement, even among intelligent, thinking adults.