Question: What do the following actors have in common?: Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal, Keanu Reeves, Nathan Lane, Robin Williams, Alicia Silverstone.

Answer: They were all exposed trying to do Shakespeare.

Lars and the Real Girl is a sweet film that gets a lot of emotional mileage out of showing people being kind. It is a film in which people are loving for no other reason than they can be and where they choose to be compassionate rather than cruel because doing the former seldom costs more than the latter.

What makes the film’s ending so sad and tragic is that I’m not sure that the characters themselves know. One can only spend so much time trying to keep truth hidden before one begins to lose the ability to recognize what it is.

A lot of critical ink has been used to talk about how politically brave the film is, given that the outcome of the war was in no ways assured in 1940. So I was ready for the political satire and the humanistic speech at the end. Here’s what I wasn’t ready for–how darn funny the film can be.

There is no way this film should be this good. A retelling of Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd” set in the French Foreign Legion, directed by a woman born in France, and culminating with an electric break dance by the Claggart character (Denis Lavant as Galoup)? Are you kidding me?

Okay, the plot is pure melodrama, but talk about star power…
The story is essentially a love triangle, with Clark Gable playing a big game hunter who is sought both by the free spirited Honey Bear …