Steve Carell has officially entered the roll call of actors whose names are automatically attached to everything, specifically if that thing is a comedy involving a mild-mannered, sympathetic loser-type who breaks out of his shell in increasingly zany and/or destructive ways. The latest prospective Carell role is Universal’s Lunatics, based on the upcoming novel co-written by Saturday Night Live vet Alan Zweibel and the strip-mall Mark Twain, syndicated columnist Dave Barry, which concerns two New Jersey fathers whose feuding over their kids’ soccer games becomes a war of epic proportions. Carell will play the mild-mannered, sympathetic loser-type who owns a pet store and volunteers as a referee, thus getting caught up in all the increasingly zany and/or destructive shenanigans. It’s the third or fourth Steve Carell project that’s been confirmed in the past week or so, and while he’s clearly making some ambitious plans for his box office future, somehow those plans still don’t include our ongoing sequel Dan In Real Life: Back 2 The Life (previous scenes from which can be found here and here). And that's too bad, because it's just getting good.
INT. SUBTERRANEAN REPTILIAN LAIR
Dan and Mitch peer out from behind a concrete pillar, Mitch taking care to ensure that the spikes of his carefully constructed bedhead don’t give away their position. The scene before them is a nightmare of alien viscera: a makeshift nursery, where hundreds, possibly thousands of pulsating eggs lie in puddles of viscous goo, waiting to hatch and give birth to Marie’s next wave of reptilian soldiers. Dan’s face registers his shock by remaining absolutely blank, as though he can’t quite believe he’s in this movie.
DAN (muttering to himself)
I ordered a muffin… But I think they gave me a giant alien egg.
MITCH
What, bro?
DAN
Nothing. Just a joke. Sort of. You know, Mitch, I’ve always said that there is often rightness in our wrongness, but I don’t know anymore. I mean, we both fell for the same woman, and that woman turned out to be a hideous alien overlord—and by the looks of things, a pretty fertile one. Who knows? Some of these may even be ours. I don’t know that there’s anything right about that.
MITCH
I hear you, bro. When I first saw Marie, I felt like I was in the room with an angel.
DAN
Yeah, you’ve said that before. [Cocks shotgun.] This shotgun is like an angel. The angel of taking care of business. Know what I mean?
They exchange knowing nods for approximately five minutes.