The trailer for Lars and the Real Girl, starring Ryan Gosling, is up, and it looks to be a quirky little affair. Penned by Six Feet Under scribe Nancy Oliver and directed by Craig Gillespie (the mysteriously shelved Mr. Woodcock), the movie is described as a
heartfelt comedy, centering around Lars
Lindstrom, a loveable introvert whose emotional baggage has kept him
from fully embracing life. After years of almost complete solitude, he
invites Bianca, a friend he met on the Internet, to visit him. Lars even introduces Bianca to his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and his wife
Karen (Emily Mortimer). The catch? Bianca is a life-size doll, not a real
person.

Gosling, of course, plays it straight and sincere in the trailer, and so a lot of the comedy lies in the reactions of those around him, chiefly Schneider, whose All the Real Girls, in all its small town quietude, seems somewhat of an influence here. The comedic elements will help this play a bit more broadly, but these dinged, nervous-guy protagonist movies — like James Mangold’s Heavy, Wayne Kramer’s The Cooler, and the forthcoming Dedication, off the top of my head, though I know I’m forgetting a couple better examples — are uphill slogs commercially without a mitigating plot point.

Now would seem to be the time where I say something like the clock is ticking on Gosling, and that he has to embrace more overtly commercial fare (what about one of these half dozen goddamned brooding comic book hero parts?) if he wants to capitalize on chance and jump aboard the stardom train. The thing is, that’s what the rather excellent Fracture was, after all — a piece of commercial work — and where did it get him? Even costarring Anthony Hopkins, the movie didn’t crack $40 million, domestically. Ergo, I’m totally on board with Gosling’s plan of avoidance. As he told me in an interview earlier this year, “My representation has pretty much given up on ever making much money on me.”

For Gosling, his choices matter heartily. He’s prepping his own directorial debut and he’s got Peter Jackson’s King Kong follow-up, an adaptation of Alice Sebold’s spare, haunting The Lovely Bones, coming up next year. Just like Johnny Depp, stardom will find Gosling when it’s damn well ready; he’s that talented. Thanks to the conviction of his performances, word-of-mouth on the guy
is sincere and lasting, so mainstream audiences will eventually come
around. And in the interim, I certainly don’t mind the adventurousness of his choices. Lars and the Real Girl releases October 12.