Boy meets life-size silicone mannequin in "Lars and the Real Girl," an offbeat comedy that plays as if Preston Sturges came back to life and collaborated with the Coen Brothers on an updated version of the Jimmy Stewart film "Harvey."

The setting is a flat Midwestern town, where the lonely, overweight and socially mal adroit office worker Lars (a pitch-perfect Ryan Gosling) hears one day that anatomically correct "girls" are available on the Internet.

He sends for one, but doesn't use it for sex. Instead, he introduces "her" as Bianca, his new Swedish-Brazilian girlfriend, to his bewildered brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and Gus' very pregnant wife, Karin (Emily Mortimer).

While the properly chaperoned Bianca moves into their guest bedroom, Lars – who carries psychic scars that are gradually revealed over the course of the flick – continues to live quietly in the garage and gradually emerges from his shell.

A sympathetic doctor (Patricia Clarkson) recommends that Gus and his wife support Lars' delusion. She believes it serves a purpose at this point in his life.

Gradually, the entire snow-covered community (even the girl with a not-so-secret crush on Lars, nicely played by Kelli Garner) comes to put aside their snickers and welcome Bianca, who becomes a cherished hospital volunteer.

The strength of the movie is how it makes emotional sense even as it defies logic. You can cynically debate whether an entire Midwestern town would accept Lars' peculiarity. Or you can be comforted by the movie's thesis that people will go to extreme lengths to help each other.

"Lars and the Real Girl" is funny. But the laughs are nervous and uncomfortable. At the same time you're laughing at Lars' respectful interactions with the doll, you can also see him overcome his fear of intimacy and interact with people he never could before.

"Lars and the Real Girl" is a gentle comedy, offbeat but never cute, never lewd and never going for shortcut laughs that might diminish character. It's an emotionally invested movie about loneliness and the lingering scars of early trauma. It is rated PG-13 and has a running time of one hour, 46 minutes.