Four stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.1.16
Sally Field remains cute as a
bug: as personable and effervescent as she was back in 1965, when she debuted
as television’s Gidget.
 |
| Decked out in a wildly inappropriate, hot-neon-yellow '80s-era jumpsuit in order to "fit in" with the modern millennial nightclub crowd, Doris (Sally Field, center) does her best to impress John (Max Greenfield, third from left) and the rest of their hipster entourage. |
The difference, all these years
later, is that she also has matured into a deceptively powerful actress. Too
many people take the bubbly exterior for granted — the signature cheerfulness —
and then act surprised when Field unleashes impressive layers of pathos or expressive
intensity.
We shouldn’t be surprised; her
dramatic chops have been well established ever since Norma Rae and Places in
the Heart, and subsequently well exercised in Steel Magnolias, a well-remembered
guest appearance on TV’s E.R., and 2013’s Oscar-nominated supporting role in Lincoln.
Given the right material, Field
can be a force of nature ... and Hello, My Name Is Doris definitely is the
right material.
Director Michael Showalter’s
bittersweet dramedy has been expanded from Doris and the Intern, an 8-minute
short by then film student Laura Terruso, who shared her work with Showalter
while he was teaching at her alma mater, New York University’s Tisch School of
the Arts. Obviously impressed, he and Terruso began a scripting collaboration that
has resulted in this feature film: a clever and sensitive expansion of what
began as little more than a droll comedy.
(Terruso’s short is readily
available for online viewing: an opportunity I strongly encourage ... but only
after you’ve seen this feature.)
We meet Doris Miller (Field), a
“woman of a certain age,” during her all-time worst personal crisis. Her mother
has just died, after having been “monitored” full-time by Doris, who put her
own life on hold in the process. We get hints that Mom was something of a
shut-in with a “clutter habit,” both traits having been absorbed, more or less,
by Doris.
With Mom barely in the grave,
Doris’ insensitive brother Todd (Stephen Root) and his mean-spirited wife
Cynthia (Wendi McLendon-Covey, the pluperfect shrew) are anxious for Doris to
sell the Staten Island house in which she was raised, and has spent all that
effort as a full-time caregiver. Todd and Cynthia wish to reap the financial
windfall.
Doris panics at the thought: What
Cynthia dismisses as the home’s mountains of junk, Doris regards as a “museum”
of accumulated memories shared with her late mother. As with most hoarders,
Doris simply refuses to acknowledge any sort of problem.
More to the point, she’s suddenly
adrift — answerable to nobody but herself — and utterly baffled by how to put
that first self-indulgent foot forward.
