Steve Carell plays nice as head of family comedy
LOS ANGELES — Sometimes, nice guys fi nish fi rst. Steve Carell, for instance, seems to be doing just fi ne. Fans will see his dark side in the upcoming drama Foxcatcher, but for immediate Carell sweetness there is his involvement in much lighter fare. He plays the harried dad and husband in the family comedy Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Inspired by Judith Viorst’s 1970s children’s book, the Disney fi lm features Carell and Jennifer Garner, who portrays his wife and mother of his four kids. It’s family business as usual until their son Alexander ( Ed Oxenbould) inadvertently curses his parents and his siblings ( Dylan Minnette, Kerris Dorsey, and Elise and Zoey Vargas as baby Trevor) to a worst day ever. That leads to lots of mishaps, pratfalls and more than few farcical calamities presented by director Miguel Arteta. Carell off ered four reasons why the comedy works: The group dynamic was powerful: “We did feel like a unit and we quickly became friends,” Carell says of Garner and the young actors. “It does sound like a cliché, but we quickly became a family. That’s the way I like to work — where everybody feels that they are part of the eff ort.” The director was a perfect fi t: Arteta established his reputation with quirky independent fi lms. Those past eff orts make him an unlikely candidate to shape a Disney comedy, but that’s exactly why Carell thinks the movie is special. “I worked with Miguel on The Offi ce and he was great for the show,” says the actor, who points out the fi lmmaker brought creative fi nesse to the series and Alexander. “( Miguel) knows characters and comedy and also understands the subtleties of the relationships, and how to translate that, especially to this movie. This could have been broad and straight down the middle, but he brings a quality to it.” Carell was a truth monitor: He has two kids, so he was asked to speak up if moments in the movie felt off . He took his comedy responsibilities seriously. “If anything ran false, we would speak up, but more often than not we didn’t have to,” Carell says. A comedy cameo as a tribute and a connection: Dick Van Dyke shows up briefly in the fi lm. He plays himself, and Carell was excited but disappointed he didn’t have scenes with the veteran. Still, Arteta thought it was appropriate Carell and Van Dyke would be in the same fi lm as both represent diff erent generations of “nice comedy.” “Steve Carell is the heir of that,” Arteta says. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day opens Friday.