Can a forty-something widower find love again while raising three girls, advancing his career, and getting heckled by meddling family members? He can if he's being played by Steve Carell in Dan in Real Life.

Carell's reps, no doubt praying for a hit after the disappointing performance of Evan Almighty earlier this year, should consider buying a present for the director of this ingratiatingly contrived romantic-comedy. Peter Hedges has given their client a vehicle that showcases his talent for dry sarcasm, clownish physicality, vulnerability and officiousness. Dan Clay, a Dear Abby-type newspaper columnist, is a perfect match for Carell, who even gets to sing and play the guitar while wooing the second love of his life, portrayed by Juliette Binoche. 

The movie's lack of originality -- think The 40-Year-Old Virgin meets Bridget Jones' Diary, with strains of Parenthood and The Family Stone -- is an obstacle that Carell's good-guy-with-a-weird-side persona overcomes. As in his breakout film The 40-Year-Old Virgin, a need for sexual healing and adult companionship drives the plot -- minus the vulgarity, mind you. Dan is still gun shy four years after his wife's death. In his defense, he's been busy looking after three daughters and doling out domestic advice to his readers.

He's an overbearing parent, prompting his youngest to observe: "You're a good father but sometimes a bad dad." Crowd-pleasing movies of this kind often hinge on such distinctions, since most every parent and most every child can identify. After learning a major syndication deal for his column is in the offing, Dan packs his reluctant girls into his red Mercedes wagon and heads to an annual family gathering at his parents' vacation house in Rhode Island.

Immediately upon arriving, his mother (Diane Wiest) shoos him into town for some much-needed alone time. In a bookstore, he meets Marie (Binoche). They connect over literature and muffins during the film's most groan-worthy sequence, then she must dash. Turns out, Marie is Dan's younger brother's new girlfriend. Over the long weekend, Dan and Marie try to squelch their feelings while the family embraces her and Mitch (Dane Cook) is ecstatic, laboring under the delusion he's found his soul mate.

Initially, the movie is as desperate and pent-up as everyone assumes Dan should be. The first reel is movie by soundtrack and montage, but then it finds its groove. Not that the outcome is ever in doubt; Dan in Real Life is thoroughly corny and symmetrical. You know there will be games of charades and touch football. A talent show dubbed Cirque du Clay provides Dan the chance to send Marie his musical valentine. And there's ample time for running gags involving a washing machine and speeding tickets, plus evidence that Marie is both right for Dan and will make the ideal step-mom.

For all its predictability, Dan in Real Life knows what it is and doesn't shirk from the consequences. Dan's situation is eminently relatable thanks to Carell, and the family dynamic is authentic. It's also quite warm and funny, giving rise to memorable lines such as "You are a murderer of love!" shrieked by his middle daughter infatuated with a Wilder Valderrama look-alike from school.

One high point is a hilarious ditty the Clays sing at the expense of porcine Ruthie, a family friend Dan's parents fix him up with. But Ruthie has blossomed into a hottie physician (played by Emily Blunt), so one needn't worry about her feelings, or Mitch's for that matter.

Near the end, Dan's eldest daughter delivers a quip that neatly sums up Dan in Real Life: "This is all so queer, but I wouldn't miss it for anything."

(Released by Touchstone Pictures and rated "PG-13" for some innuendo.)