At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Ever gone to a non-chain coffee shop & saw some ridiculous hipster using a typewriter & wondered what he/she is working on? This is it. Terrible dialogue that a horrible hipster was patting his/herself on the back about. Danny McBride is in it, so that's cool.

Paul (Paul Schneider) hangs out with his friends Tip (Shea Whigham), Bust-Ass (Danny McBride), and Bo (Maurice Compte) in their small town. Paul is known as the town's ladies' man. He's been with every girl but only in short flings. Tip's sister Noel (Zooey Deschanel) comes home after boarding school. Noel is a virgin and thoughtful. Paul falls for her but Tip does not approve.I don't really buy Schneider as this character. He doesn't fit but an indie can have casting problems like this sometimes. It is still very distracting. On the other hand, Zooey Deschanel is wonderful. It's a slow touching romance. The central conceit of Paul is tough to overcome. This is still a nice indie with some charms.

All the Real Girls (2003): Dir: David Gordon Green / Cast: Zooey Deschanel, Paul Schneider, Patricia Clarkson, Danny McBride, Shea Whigham: Disappointing film about the quest for meaningful relationships. Paul Schneider lives with his mother and works for his uncle until Zooey Deschanel returns to town thus opening his first real relationship. Decent setup follows endless unnecessary scenes where characters become temporary focus that turn up when convenient. Audience groaned as Schneider stands waist deep in water talking to a dog in conclusion. He plays a guy struggling with the reality of relationships, and Deschanel tries to communicate her feelings. Both are capable actors subdued in weak writing. Patricia Clarkson is wasted as his mother who entertains patients as a clown. Considering the film she is in being a clown might not be such a bad idea. Danny McBride might have played better in another film. For all the positive vibes this film has received, it comes off as a shitty amateur film that looks more like a home movie than a creative independent film. David Gordon Green overuses fade shots as if every scene needed dramatic payoff. He also shoots useless footage of people and objects. Drab photography that further deadens the film. It contains a theme about relationships but the execution is so boring that it will likely put all the real girls and their real men to sleep. Score: 2 / 10

All the Real Girls is a love story, but according to director David Gordon Green on the DVD he would almost not want to explain what it's about. The reason for this turns out to sound, perhaps, a little too high-minded or poetic, maybe just pretentious, as he expounds upon the way the sun hits the two and a half legged dog and that that's what the movie is 'about'. In short, he explains, the movie is just about how we are. That's possibly a good way of explaining it, or reasoning it or whatever, since the film is not entirely classifiable almost in spite of its more typical and tender elements. But as a work of a director like Green it is something that is all his own, for better or worse (mostly for better), which is something that has been seen in the work he's put out so far with the possible exception or amendment of Pineapple Express.It's by no means a really great love story nor a really great film. Yet as someone who has tried to crack writing his own relationship dramas, this struck a chord. There are real scenes of truth, of revelation and insight, and tenderness and the resolve to try and accept the way things are which can never be done. Paul Schneider plays a character named Paul (how close to real life I leave to you to figure on), who is something of a town Lothario, albeit not really proud of it as we later learn. He and Noel (Zooey Deschanel) fall for each other despite the angry protest of her hick brother Tip. We then see the relationship unfold as something of a first-young love scenario, both for Paul and for virgin Noel, and how it plays out against some more specific drama and character interplay with Paul's frustrated hospital-clown mother (Clarkson) and friend Bust-Ass (Danny McBride).As tends to happens in certain young-love movies, there's something that happens that occurs that mucks the whole thing up- more-so for Paul than Noel in one of those 'funny' kind of hard to take ways- and yet Green even treats this as well as other tougher moments with care and attention to how real and awkward and truthful the actors should play it. This doesn't necessarily mean all the scenes work completely or feel a little jagged with the patient (not really slow) pacing. But when they do work they work very well, like a confession Noel makes to Paul in the hotel room, or a silly scene at a bowling alley. And while Green paints his 'canvas' of sorts with this sleepy blue-collar North Carolina town with some arty montages (the SKY, the high-speed factory, hills and landscapes, pretty pictures), the actors are surprisingly good with seeming to do so little. Part of that is the subtle strengths in the writing, and some of it is just how Scheider and Deschanel keep things simple and sensitive. Even Whigham has a good scene expanding his character. Clarkson is also a given for doing small wonders on screen.If it's not quite one of the most mind-blowing romance films I've seen this decade, it might be that I wasn't entirely in the right frame of mind, or didn't find all of the little scenes with the supporting characters worked as well as the central "plot" (in quotes for redundancy), or that the music is sometimes placed in ill-fitting scenes or is too sappy for my taste. These criticisms aren't to say it's a very well accomplished effort, a small and intelligent picture that doesn't cheat on its characters. It is familiar, and it feels very much a true Sundance fest effort, but it's better than others I've come across for its originality and tact.