C

Steve Carell certainly hasn’t taken long to descend into the Steve Martin Syndrome—the move from goofy, edgy comedies (or ambitious oddities like “Pennies from Heaven”) into family pabulum like “Parenthood” or the “Father of the Bride” movies. One might argue that the decline started with “Little Miss Sunshine,” but that would be unfair, since that picture had its own brand of offbeat lunacy and didn’t drown in sentiment. But nobody could defend the horrible makeup and worse special effects that burdened him in the icky, oh-so-sweet “Evan Almighty.”

And now there’s “Dan in Real Life,” the second feature directed by Peter Hedges (“Pieces of April”), a soft-grained sitcom in which he plays a sad-sack widower with three daughters who falls for his own brother’s girlfriend. To make matters worse—in every sense of the term—his not-so-fraternal action occurs during one of those big family reunions beloved of screenwriters (Hedges set his last movie amidst one of them, too) and throws the whole crew into a humorous tizzy. Carell does the shambling, doe-eyed shtick the part requires of him well enough, but the question is why—unless the answer is that he intends to become a movie star the same way Martin did, by blending and, if you’ll forgive the neologism, blanding. If there were what TV commercials might once have called a “very special episode” of “The Office,” this might be it.

Though the title suggests a sense of authenticity, the movie is as resolutely plastic and formulaic as most half-hour network comedy pilots. Carell plays Dan Burns, a local newspaper advice columnist who—surprise of surprises!—is himself in emotional turmoil. He’s still suffering from the loss some years previously of his beloved wife, and trying to cope with the responsibility of being a single dad to his girls Jane (Alison Pill), Cara (Brittany Robertson) and Lilly (Marlene Lawston) though it pains him to see the reflection of their dead mother in them. The domestic problems are the usual sort: he won’t let Jane drive, which disturbs her sense of maturity; he objects to Cara’s high-school romance; and he doesn’t give Lilly the attention she craves.

But those problems pale by comparison to the one that arises when the four go off to the Burns family annual seaside retreat, where they’re all stuck in close quarters with the extended family, which includes Dan’s happily gruff dad (John Mahoney), wise and pushy mom (Dianne Wiest) and younger brother Mitch Dane Cook), an aerobics instructor. When Dan takes a solo trip to the local bookstore, he has one of those only-in-the-movies cute meetings with bright, lovely Marie (Juliette Binoche), and you can see him lifted from the doldrums by her engaging attitude. Unfortunately, she turns out to be her brother’s latest girlfriend, newly arrived for the family outing.

And so begins the main plot, in which Dan must try to repress his feelings for Marie—something he can’t manage very gracefully—while keeping things reasonably balanced with his kids, his parents, and his other perceptive relatives (not including his brother, who’s about as dense as they come). Awkward situations keep coming up, of course—one rather predictably finding Dan and Marie stuck together in a shower while Jane prattles on outside in some of the script’s lamest dialogue. And the problem isn’t all one-sided: when the family sets Dan up with a local girl named Ruthie (Emily Blunt), Marie shows her jealous side, too. Obviously the both know they’re meant for one another but find themselves trapped by circumstances.

Except in a few instances (like a misguided trip to a bar by Dan, Ruthie, Mitch and Marie, which turns into a weird dance contest, or a visit by Dan and Marie to a bowling alley), the movie avoids the kind of raucousness so common in Hollywood comedies nowadays, and apart from a couple of witless detours (like befuddled Dan’s repeated encounters with a local cop), it doesn’t descend into pat embarrassment humor. But it makes its predictable points in so bland, laid-back a fashion that it never gets up to speed; it just ambles along to a conclusion that’s positively foreordained.

It doesn’t help that the Burns brood seems as irritating than lovable (especially Cook, whose whiny, eager Mitch would never attract a sophisticate like Marie), with even veterans like Mahoney and Wiest reduced to blandness. (The family “talent show” sequence may be realistic, but it’s certainly not fun.) Nor that Blunt comes across as simply too strong as Ruthie. Nor (not to be too gentlemanly about it) that Binoche, beautiful and energetic as she is, is just a tad old to be convincing as Marie. Nor that Carell never has an opportunity to cut loose.

“Dan in Real Life” is nicely appointed, with pleasant locations and a reasonably convincing production design (by Sarah Knowles) and art direction (Mark E. Garner) set off well by Lawrence Sher’s cinematography. But the sense of visual authenticity isn’t matched by the action; “Dan in Real Life” feels as manufactured as a piece of assembly-line furniture.