Sentimental, glib 'Dan' steers clear of real life

I think I'd respect Peter Hedges more if he just came out and admitted he's a big old softie. The novelist ("What's Eating Gilbert Grape") turned screenwriter ("About a Boy") turned director ("Pieces of April") apparently thinks he's cutting through the Hollywood bushwa with his smallish movies, but the digitally-shot "April" was a fake indie with a Hallmark soul and his new film, "Dan in Real Life," bears as much relation to the real real life as "The Game Plan" does to professional football.

Co-written with Pierce Gardner and co-starring Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche as mismatched lovers, the movie's cute and pleasant and trumped up and forgettable - a "quality" film without a spine. Carell plays Dan Burns, a newspaper advice columnist whose life is a shambles. There's a great movie to be had in the notion of a busybody whose advice keeps blowing up in his face, but "Dan in Real Life" merely sets it up and walks away.

Instead, Hedges spirits us to one of those large, fractious family gatherings that can be hard to take when the clan isn't your own (see: "The Family Stone"). Dan, a recent widower, has three daughters: sensible Jane (Alison Pill, wonderful), rebellious Cara (Brittany Roberts), and wise, adorable Lilly (Marlene Lawston). Cara, 14, is in love with a classmate with that pink-stationery passion reserved for teenage girls, and the spooked Dan packs everyone off to a weekend reunion at the lakeside home of his parents (John Mahoney and Dianne Wiest, adorable and wise).

On a run into town, Dan bumps into the wisely adorable Marie (Binoche) and is instantly smitten; returning home, it's revealed she's the new girlfriend of his lunkhead brother, Mitch (Dane Cook). Now, this is good: Carell excels at playing a smart, ardent guy having to squelch his emotions while feeling increasingly spiteful toward his happy-happy siblings and in-laws. Crossword-puzzle races, talent shows, Pictionary games - it's enough to lead a grown man to thoughts of murder.

Every time "Dan in Real Life" catches something true about human behavior, though - the way Dan and Marie subtly dance with each other in a local bar when they're supposedly dancing with others - Hedges sands off the edges with glibness. He arranges scenes rather than lets them happen: Dan accidentally sharing a shower stall with Marie, or the entire family piling into the hero's room, "Night at the Opera"-style, with unwanted advice.

These are funny bits, but you feel the hand of the director in every frame, guiding his characters toward tidy resolutions. "Dan in Real Life" embarks on an orgy of bow-tying at the end, making sure that all have their mates and that every life lesson has been learned. There's so little doubt left in the film you can barely breathe.

Binoche gamely dumbs down one of her complex Euro-heroines for US consumption but she's fundamentally miscast - she and Cook belong together like caviar and motor oil. Likewise, Carell struggles with playing a "good father" who's also a "bad dad" while trying to stay on the viewer's sunny side; he's best when collapsing into dark comic despair, as in a scene in which he hijacks his brother's sappy rendition of "Let My Love Open the Door" to his own miserable ends.

Roberts, as the swoony teen daughter, is a pain but at least she's a recognizable pain, and Emily Blunt owns her one scene as a local lady with a longstanding crush on Dan, mostly because the movie doesn't require anything more of her. Everyone else treads very carefully, worried the audience will turn against them.

Doesn't Hedges understand that's our problem, not his? There's a difference between liking your characters and insisting they be likable, and for all its aspirations toward life as it's lived, "Dan in Real Life" lacks the nerve of genuine storytelling. It's for moviegoers who would have preferred "Little Miss Sunshine" if that movie hadn't been so gosh-darn dark.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@ globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.