Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling) is a desperately shy young man who lives in his own little world, having retreated there following a parental death. He lives in a converted garage whilst in a proper house yards away, lives his centered brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and sister-in-law Karin (Emily Mortimer).

Gus and Karin are concerned for Lars and anxious to ensure he doesn't become too much of a loner, and they're therefore very happy when Lars announces he's got a girlfriend, that she's coming to stay soon and that they'll really like her.

Lars's girlfriend does arrive. She's called Bianca and they're told she's quite shy too - fortunate that, because Bianca can't speak on account of the fact that she's not even a real woman. Bianca is a sex doll that Lars has bought over the internet.

They quickly have to stifle their initial reaction upon seeing that to Lars, Bianca IS real, and what's more upon meeting up with the family physician Dr Berman (Patricia Clarkson), they're told that Lars is going through a cathartic process following the family trauma that's affected him and that their best attitude is to just play along with the pretence that Bianca is real.

During the course of the film, a transformation takes place in Lars, who comes out of his shell, driving Bianca out and around the village, whilst the locals start to embrace Bianca and treat her as a real person in a comedy that many feel is both perceptive and frequently amusing. Many will find Lars and the Real Girl particularly amusing and certainly there's a novelty hook about the idea of how will a whole village react to a young man taking a sex doll as his girlfriend. The film though takes a thoroughly sanitized view of Bianca's interaction with Lars. Bianca is not so much of a sexual being to Lars and more of a long-term friend who he wants to get to know.

Plus it's easy to resent the implication given in the film that there is something wrong with Lars that needs curing. A recent TV documentary interviewed many men who have plastic dolls for partners, men who are perfectly happy in their own lives and have chosen to go down that route and you can understand and easily argue that if that works for them, then who are we to question their lifestyle, if they're happy in themselves and causing no harm to anyone else.

Throughout Lars and the Real Girl you're given the impression that Lars is sick and in need of curing and Bianca far from being a sex doll, is a novelty 'act' who everyone in the village grows fond of - and in that sense there's no reality here - the whole thing is too sugarcoated. When Lars and Bianca go to a party for example, there is no one there that wants to be a darker character and attempt to have their wicked way with Bianca... it's just not that type of film and mor's the pity really, a little bit of black comedy might at least have added spice and drama.

Instead though, we have nice little sanitized comedy about a shy bloke who wants an honourable and pure relationship with a sex doll and a grinning and patronizing yuppie couple related to him suppressing their emotions to go along with a pretence, and then half the village also seemingly seeing Bianca as a real person.

This is a reasonable effort, with Ryan Gosling good as Lars, but it could have been so much better.