The premise of Lars and the Real Girl—Lars (Ryan Gosling) buys a blow-up doll and tells everyone “she” is his girlfriend—doesn’t sound particularly spiritual, and a lesser creative team would have mined the material for innuendo and cheap laughs. But screenwriter Nancy Oliver and director Craig Gillespie go in a different direction. They build a gentle, small-town church community around Lars that embraces his eccentricities, even as they help him to grow beyond them. Lars and the Real Girl reveals more than just an appreciation for the earthly side of religion, however, with a climactic scene that marries death and baptism to the hope of new life.
—Tyler J. Petty