I just finished watching one of my all time favorite films, Dan In Real Life (IMDB), with a few of my friends. So what’s so special about that? Well, you see, this is the third time I’ve seen this film and I can honestly say that this time around I had the time of my life. Why? First, let me tell you what it was like when I watched this movie for the first time.
I was sitting by myself the day before a long flight from Philadelphia to California. I had just finished my last final exam, packed everything, and was just lounging around waiting for the day to end and the next to begin. Most of my classmates and friends had already left and there was just one person left to kill time with. So we decided to walk over to the closest movie theater, grabbed some drinks, and then stumbled upon the movie “Dan In Real Life” in our clumsy search for some entertainment. It looked like a decent movie with an uncomplicated combination of plot, characters, and a nice happy ending. Just the thing we were looking for to pass the time.
Boy was I wrong.
We had just found the most depressing, hilarious, dramatic, cozy, and crazy schmorgasborg of a film. I’m not going to go into a review of the film but suffice it to say we were completely taken in by the story and two and a half hours later we became the most satisfied movie goers on the face of the planet. I was so delighted with the experience I decided that I would never see such a beautifully well formed story for a long time.
And again—-I was just wrong.
Eggplant Parm (Bathenjan)
Two days later I was sitting in utter comfort with my family in California enjoying a warm homecooked meal (mmmmm….eggplant parm) and I started describing the film to them. A few mouthfulls later we all shoved ourselves into our couches, turned on the tv, and saw Dan in Real Life for the first time. And when I say ‘first time’ I mean that for everyone, including me; With my family at my side every joke took on a different shape. Suddenly the funny became more hilarious, the sad more depressing, and the cute adorable. It was like every single emotion was intesified tenfold. And two and a half hours later I was even more delighted than the ‘first time’ I had seen the movie. There was no way this movie could get any better!
WRONG!
So I’m back in West Philadelphia born and raised on the playg—sorry, got derailed there. Anyways, fast forward two years and there I am with a couple of friends who don’t know what to do with their Sunday night. So I suggest we watch a movie. How about Dan In Real Life? “Dude that looks lame!” my friends implore. But I press on and with few other options in their hands I convince them to come to my place to enjoy something I thought I had known all too well. My friends were slow to come around but they eventually succumbed to the movie’s engrossing characters. They began to snicker and lose their ‘I’m too cool for this’ attitude. And then those snickers became laughs, which quickly become guffaws, and finally uncontrollable CONVULSIONS of hilarity. I realized something interesting; Here I was seeing this movie for the third time and enjoying every joke, feeling every twist and turn, and fully immersed in the story more than ever before. Once again my environment and the people surrounding me resonated with what I was seeing. And the result was perfection.
(to be continued…)