Small Town Movie Churches III: Lars and the Real GIrl

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

You wouldn’t expect a film about a sex toy to be so...well… nice. But “nice” certainly describes 2007’s Lars and the Real Girl. "Nice" is unusual for a film featuring a porn product, but films about small towns don't often do "nice" anymore, either.

Small towns used to be happy places in movies. Who wouldn’t want to live in the Bedford Falls of It’s a Wonderful Life? That used to be a fairly typical depiction of small towns in films: happy places where everyone cared for each other. Small towns in contemporary films tend to be sinister places with dark secrets -- and few small towns have secrets darker than those in another recent film, Get Out.

This change perhaps comes from changes in American demographics that filmmakers reflect. At the beginning of the 20th century, most Americans lived in rural areas. Since the mid 20th century, most Americans live in big cities or suburbs. So when George Bailey was running along Main Street, most Americans could relate. When Chris Washington (in Get Out) leaves Uber and GrubHub behind, a majority of Americans can relate to his feelings. Sure, in Hallmark movies, small towns are friendly places, but in many feature films, they’re ominous.

Even more atypical, the small town church in Lars and the Real Girl is nice as well.

Ryan Gosling plays Lars, a strange young man who has a difficult time relating to people. He's particularly awkward with women. One day he orders a life-size woman doll from an adult website and, once she arrives, introduces her to people as his new girlfriend. Taking a cue from a Dr. Dagmar, a family doctor and psychiatrist (Patricia Clarkson), people in town agree to treat “Bianca” as if she were a real girl in hopes that it will help Lars work out emotional and psychological issues.

An interesting thing about Lars’ relationship with Bianca is that it is chaste. He has his “girlfriend” stay in a spare bedroom at his brother and sister-in-law's house, saying  “She’s really religious; could she sleep at your place?” (His brother, Gus, is played by Paul Schneider -- who also played Mark Brendanawicz on Parks and Recreation, one of the great TV shows about small-town life.)

Lars introduces Bianca to people as a missionary and an orphan raised by nuns. “God made her to help people.”

The really interesting thing, for us here at Movie Churches, the local church, Holy Grace Lutheran Church. Before Bianca’s arrival, we see Lars listening to a sermon by the Reverend Bock (R.D. Reid). He’s talking about how the world is full of books and books of law. But, Reverend Bock says, “There is one law; love one another, that is the one true law.”

We see a meeting of some kind of church board that debates about how they should treat Lars and Bianca. One man at the meeting says they should have nothing to do with Bianca, but a woman on the board points out that another woman in the church is a kleptomaniac, and a man in the church dresses his cats. She says they need to treat Lars with kindness. The pastor says the important thing to consider is “what would Jesus do,” and he believes they shouldn’t judge Lars. Instead, they should treat Bianca with kindness as a way to love to Lars.

So, when the pastor welcomes visitors as a part of the Sunday morning service, he welcomes Bianca. The rest of the service seems rather conventional, with the congregation singing “Holy, Holy, Holy” and a sermon on I Corinthians 13.

The church (and the whole town, for that matter) take Bianca into their lives, and their acceptance seems to help Lars move on with life. Lars informs Dr. Dagmar that Bianca is sick -- in fact, dying. The ladies of the church come to sit with Lars for the “death watch,” bringing plenty of casseroles with them. They make sure Lars eats and rests while he waits. Bianca does “die,” and the church holds a memorial service for her.

And Lars seems to be better, stronger. He even asks a woman in the church choir on a date. 

People talk about “Minnesota Nice,” but I think that "nice" crosses the border into Wisconsin, earning the Reverend Bock and his congregation our highest rating of Four Steeples.

Wisconsin movie on the big screen

Miner Theater, Ladysmith, Wisconsin

I’m starting with blunt honesty here. We saw this week’s movie because it was free. We’ve made a commitment to see a movie in a theater (yes, drive-ins count) in every state, but ticket prices (and the necessary popcorn) adds up.

We’d considered going to community showings of films in previous weeks, but it never quite worked out. This week, though, we were in Rusk County, Wisconsin, for the “Leaf it to Rusk Fall Festival.” (We were a little annoyed with the DJ on local radio station WLDY, The Dice, who pronounced it “Leave it to Rusk” rather than emphasizing the pun “Leaf it.”) The community festival included the biggest farmer’s market of the year; a beer, wine, and cheese tasting; a classic car show; an antique tractor show; a dunk tank; live music, free ice cream; and more. That “more” included a free movie at the local movie theater, but that movie was a year old, the animated sequel, Hotel Transylvania 2.

I was rather surprised by not hating the film, perhaps because it was directed by a talented guy, Genndy Tartakovsky (Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, Star Wars: The Clone Wars), who kept the pace of the film moving along. There were some interesting voice actors in addition to the Adam Sandler stable of players, such as Steve Buscemi, Mel Brooks, Nick Offerman, and Mel Brooks. But my fondness for the film is based mostly on my love for the Universal Monster Movies as a kid. I love almost any depiction of Dracula, the Wolfman, Frankenstein’s Monster (not “Frankenstein,” as the film makes clear), and the Invisible Man. (There’s a great running gag about the Invisible Man’s imaginary girlfriend.)

We were, in the end, glad we went to the free movie because the Miner in Ladysmith is a great old theater. The theater opened in 1948, and both the interior and exterior reflect the luxuries of that time. There isn’t a balcony, but the auditorium was still fairly sizable. The restrooms were downstairs in a sunken lobby. And you can get a decent bag of popcorn for two dollars.

The film playing earlier in the week had been Pete’s Dragon, and the movie that was just starting was the animated film, Storks, so I take it they show family films whenever they can. But those films were not free.

Seen on the Small Screen in Wisconsin

People in Wisconsin have a sense of humor. Consider those cheeseheads people wear to football games. Also, they really need to have a sense of humor or they might not make it through the winters.

Since there are lots of films set in (or about) Wisconsin, we’ll just look at comedies. To narrow it further, we’ll just look at comedies that have a tie-in to television since we’re starting with a classic comedy from the 1990’s, Wayne’s World.

Wayne’s World began as skits on a TV show (Saturday Night Live) before it became a movie about a TV show. Mike Myers and Dana Carvey were part the SNL cast during of one of the enlivened periods of Saturday Night Live (which is at times lauded as brilliant and then proclaimed dead). Myers and Carvey wrote the skits for the show and wrote the film. It’s about a couple of young guys who still live with their parents whose claim to fame is a cable access show.

Admittedly, most of the film takes place in Illinois (some was even filmed there, but it was chiefly filmed in Canada) but part of the film does take place in Milwaukee where Wayne and Garth go to an Alice Cooper concert. Upon arrival in Milwaukee, the friends recreate title sequence from Laverne and Shirley, the classic Milwaukee sitcom. A little later, Wayne and Garth meet Alice backstage where he gives them a lecture on origin of Milwaukee’s name.

Wayne Campbell: So, do you come to Milwaukee often?
Alice Cooper: Well, I'm a regular visitor here, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. The French missionaries and explorers were coming here as early as the late 1600s to trade with the Native Americans.
Pete: In fact, isn't "Milwaukee" an Indian name?
Alice Cooper: Yes, Pete, it is. Actually, it's pronounced "mill-e-wah-que" which is Algonquin for "the good land."
Wayne Campbell: I was not aware of that.

There are no churches in Wayne’s World, so I’m hard pressed to come up with a Movie Church angle except this: Alice Cooper these day identifies as an Evangelical Christian. From an interview with Cooper in my hometown newspaper, The Press Democrat:

PD: When you come to Santa Rosa, you’ll be playing in a former church. Do you like the idea of that?
AC: I don’t have a problem with that. It’s a theater now, you know.
PD: Church can be a theater too, right?
AC: It is, depending on what you believe in. If it were a church being used as a church now, I might have a problem with it.
PD: You’re a born again Christian?
AC: Yeah, well if you’re a Christian, it goes without saying. I think a lot of people have a weird concept of ‘Christian’. Christian is your one-on-one relationship with Christ.

Later in the interview Cooper says, "Being Christian might be the most shocking thing I ever did."

Oh, the Milwaukee scenes in Wayne's World were filmed in Canada.

Not surprisingly, other Saturday Night Live cast members went on to make movies with Wisconsin connection.

Dan Aykroyd, part of the original cast of SNL, plays a Chicagoan who takes his family on vacation in the Wisconsin woods in the 1988 comedy, The Great Outdoors. His rest is disrupted by an in-law played by John Candy (cast member of the skit show that rivaled SNL, SCTV). The film was written by John Hughes, the eighties teen comedy guru. In this film, the woods of Wisconsin are played by Yosemite National Park in California.

Chris Farley (who had a cameo in Wayne’s World) and David Spade were part of a slightly different era of SNL’s existence, and they made a film much beloved by my nephews, 1995’s Tommy Boy. Most of the film, about a shlump who must save his family’s auto parts company, takes place in Ohio; Farley’s character, however, is a graduate of Milwaukee’s Marquette University. But the whole thing was filmed in Canada anyway.

Most SNL- related films have been viewed as crude and populist, but 2011’s Bridesmaids was nominated for two Oscars (for screenplay and best supporting actress for Gilmore Girls’ Melissa McCarthy). I don’t think the films connected to SNL became more classy, it seems more likely the Oscars are less so. The film, about the competition to be the maid of honor in a wedding, was produced by Judd Apatow (of the great one season skit series, The Ben Stiller Show) and directed by Paul Feig (creator of a great one season TV comedy, Freaks and Geeks). This film was not only chiefly set in Milwaukee, it was actually filmed in Milwaukee.

Saturday Night Live may have cleared the path for off-color humor on television, but perhaps no show has crossed the line of taste for the sake of laughs as much as South Park. That show’s co-creators starred in 1998’s BASEketball, a film that guaranteed the rest of Trey Parker's and Matt Stone's careers would be spent behind the camera. Parker and Stone play the inventors of a new sport, a combination of baseball and basketball, and the stars of a new team, the Milwaukee Beers. The film was written and directed by David Zucker, one of the creators of the wonderful, barely one season, comedy Police Squad. The film was made in California.

One comedy actually did film in Miller Park, the Milwaukee Brewers stadium. 2004’s Mr. 3000 starred Bernie Mac as a 47 year old ex-major leaguer who got back in the game to try to reach 3000 hits. Mac was also the star of a successful Fox sitcom, The Bernie Mac Show.

Robin Williams had his first big break on a sitcom, Mork and Mindy. One of his last films, the horrible Merry Friggin’ Christmas (reviewed earlier) is set in Wisconsin, but was filmed in Georgia.

Technically Billy Mumy was never in a TV comedy. But if you watch Lost in Space these days, it’s pretty darn funny. (Try not to laugh at Robot swinging his arms proclaiming, “Danger! Will Robinson! Danger!) Lost in Space may well be funnier than the 1969 Disney comedy Mumy starred in. It was about a domesticated raccoon, Rascal. Though set in a small town in Wisconsin, the film was made in California.

Molly Ringwald has an even more tenuous link to TV comedy, but she has been on Saturday Night Live. She voiced Anne Frank. For Keeps was the last film in which she played a teenager; she portrayed a high schooler who becomes pregnant. It was set and partially filmed in Madison.

Someday I plan to write a full Movie Churches review of Lars and the Real Girl (starring Ryan Gosling). It may sound odd that a film about a man who develops a relationship with an anatomically correct doll that he finds online has good things to say about the church, but it does. Though Gosling doesn’t have much of a connection to television comedy, his film co-star Emily Mortimer stars in an HBO comedy, Doll and Em. Though Lars and the Real Girl is set in a small town in Wisconsin, it was filmed entirely in Canada.

So once again, the majority of films set in this week's state were filmed elsewhere. When will filmmakers realize that Wisconsin is worthy?