Here are just some of the dramedies I have enjoyed watching recently:
Dan in Real Life
I don’t know if it’s because I love Steve Carrell so much in The Office that I find myself laughing out loud in some of the scenes in Dan in Real Life. I think he is hilarious without even trying to be so.
In this movie, he plays a newspaper columnist giving advice to parents, but in real life, he is a single dad to three daughters, two of which are teenagers, and he doesn’t really know what’s the right thing to say to them. They go back home to his family for a vacation. He meets this lovely woman at a bookstore and they immediately like each other, but she admits that she has a boyfriend. When Dan goes back to his parents’ house, his brother introduces him to his girlfriend, the woman from the bookstore. And she’s staying with them for a few days. What could be more awkward than that?
Great words of wisdom from Dan Burns 
Instead of telling our young people to plan ahead, we should tell them to plan to be surprised.
There’s rightness in our wrongness.
(After his daughter Jane tells him: If you don’t let me drive, I’ll never learn.) But if I let you, you might not live.
Life… is full of disappointments
Other memorable quotes:
Marty Barasco: Love is not a feeling, Mr. Burns. It’s an ability.
Marie: (about Mitch) It seems all his best lines were yours… this is unbearable.
Waitress
I think this is a smart, funny movie even though the theme is kind of sad.
Jenna is trapped in this unhappy marriage. She feels suffocated by her controlling and emotionally abusive jerk of a husband, Earl. But she is poor and can’t seem to muster the energy to leave him until she saves up enough money to enter this pie-making contest. And she can make damn good pies.
Then she finds out that she’s pregnant with Earl’s baby. At first, she didn’t like the idea of being pregnant. Then she meets her male OB-Gyn who’s attracted to her and makes her feel good about herself. And they start to have an affair.
I think it’s funny how Jenna comes up with these clever recipes and names for the pies that she makes, which is often influenced by whatever mood she’s having that day:
I Don’t Want Earl’s Baby Pie… You make a quiche of egg and cheese with a smoked ham center.
I Hate My Husband Pie… You take bittersweet chocolate and don’t sweeten it. You make it into a pudding and drown it in caramel.
Earl Murders Me Because I’m Having An Affair Pie… You smash blackberries and raspberries into a chocolate crust.
I Can’t Have No Affair Because It’s Wrong And I Don’t Want Earl To Kill Me Pie… Vanilla custard with banana. Hold the banana.
Pregnant Miserable Self Pitying Loser Pie… Lumpy oatmeal with fruitcake mashed in. Flambé of course.
It’s just too sad that Adrienne Shelly, the writer and director of the film, died (was murdered) before the film was even released.
My favourite quotes:
Dr. Pomatter: I want to talk to you, somewhere outside of here. Maybe we can have a coffee or something?
Jenna: I can’t have coffee, it’s on the bad food list you gave to me. What kind of doctor are you?
Jenna: Dear Baby, I hope someday somebody wants to hold you for 20 minutes straight and that’s all they do. They don’t pull away. They don’t look at your face. They don’t try to kiss you. All they do is wrap you up in their arms and hold on tight, without an ounce of selfishness in it.
I love this movie, or any movie that empowers women, for that matter.
The Bucket List
With Jack Nicholson playing a billionaire and Morgan Freeman playing a mechanic, and the plot of two terminally ill men trying to cross off the items in their list before they kick the bucket, hence The Bucket List, you’d think that it’d just be a funny movie, but it was actually also a heartwarming one.
I think it’s a good idea to have a bucket list, so to speak. I’ve seen people do it. Once in a while I’d say to myself that if I have this kind of money, I’d love to go to Rome or Paris or Greece, you know, travel around the world. That would be in my bucket list, among other things. But coming back to reality, that would only be possible if I do have that kind of money. Maybe if I won the lotto or some kind of free trip to these places. Or if I have a wealthy friend like Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie.
My favourite quotes:
Carter: Even now, I can’t claim to understand the measure of a life, but I can tell you this: I know that when he died, his eyes were closed and his heart was open, and I’m pretty sure he was happy with his final resting place because he was buried on the mountain, and that was against the law.
Carter: My pastor always says our lives are streams flowing into the same river towards whatever heaven lies in the mist beyond the falls. Find the joy in your life, Edward. My dear friend, close your eyes and let the waters take you home.
Edward: Here’s something to remember when you’re older Thomas - never pass up a bathroom, never waste a hard-on, and never trust a fart. (Only Jack Nicholson could pull off a line like that. )
