Real Life is a 1979 American comedy film starring Albert Brooks (in his directorial debut), who also co-authored the screenplay alongside Monica Johnson and Harry Shearer.

Documentary film producer Albert Brooks leads a project meant to encapsulate the joys, sorrows and intimacy of real life by filming a regular American family, the Yeagers, at all times for a full year using expensive cameras: some installed on walls, and four large helmet-like ones worn by a camera crew that follows Brooks and the family in and out of their neighboring homes.

After a meeting with the doctors, some scientists from the institute, and a film producer obsessed with getting movie stars involved, Dr. Cleary leaves the project, disapproving of how the family is being treated.

An epilogue is presented in text form saying that the house was rebuilt with a tennis court added for 'appreciation', and that Dr. Cleary's book sold poorly and he is now ill.

Roger Ebert gave the film one star out of four and wrote that it "gets most of its laughs in the first 10 minutes, slides into a long middle stretch of repetitive situations and ends on a note of embarrassing hysteria.

But for anyone well-disposed toward Mr. Brooks, who is never without his absolute insincerity and irrational good cheer, Real Life is full of delightful nonsense, a very funny account of one man's crusade to capture all the truth and wisdom that money can buy.

"[4] Variety said: "Expanding on the deadpan satiric tone of the short parodies and pseudo-documentaries he's filmed in the past for NBC's Saturday Night Live into his first feature, Albert Brooks has come up with a mostly very funny (though uneven) take-off on social-minded docu filmmaking that stands to draw boxoffice support from the young adult, primarily college crowd that's made the late-night tv show the success it is.

"[5] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, and wrote: "Admittedly, documentary filmmaking doesn't sound like the greatest subject to be satirized, but Real Life is full of undeniable laughs.

"[6] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called Grodin "wonderful to watch" and thought that the film "generates some spectacular moments," but "the movie, like the experiment, runs out of steam well before it is finished and, like many a promising routine, is stuck for a sock ending.

His extraordinary first feature, Real Life, demonstrates a potential genius for movie comedy and is animated by a peculiarly fertile and subtle imagination.