For those on Team Sally, Hello, My Name is Doris is kind of committed, self effacing character moulding you know and love from her. Doris is a fundamentally sympathetic older woman attempting to spark a fire to her life after the death of her elderly mother and some fluffing from a chintzy motivational speaker (a perfectly typecast Peter Gallagher). The resulting self-immolation comes when Doris romantically fixates on her e-fashion employer's new art director, John (Max Greenfield). Cue age-inappropriate comedy hijinks.
Showalter and his screenwriting partner, Laura Terruso (who worked this feature up from her own short film), don't only indulge Doris' amusing sexual fantasies, they also allow her and John a sometimes-affecting-sometimes-laughable friendship - enough to hint that the infatuation isn't just one sided. It's a laudable attempt in many respects, and it yields some solid comedy, but the resulting age gap doesn't only inform the film's romantic conflict, it also trips up its creatives.
It is abundantly clear as Showalter enters his second act that he hasn't really got a grip on John's too-cool-for-their-own-good cohort or on Doris' twilighting potential. For much of the film's comedic mid-section, Showalter tries his darnedest to laugh both at and with both camps, and he ends up with a hodgepodge of cheap gags and bathos.
The most egregious example is Doris' get-up at her "fish out of water" drop-in to a gig for John's favourite electro-pop band. Wear anything neon she's told by her best friend's 13 year old granddaughter (LOL) and she does (LOL). But when she rocks up to the gig everyone actually is wearing neon (WTF!?!) and they're bathed in blacklight and the band is about as electro-pop as, well, what you'd expect a 45 year old comedian who has never been to an electro-pop gig to expect electro-pop to be. The laughs come but not for the right reasons.
So, Doris then shifts to some sort of fantasy reading, peopled by caricatures of twenty-somethings and seventy-somethings... And fair enough, until the mental illness rears its somewhat-expected head. Suddenly, we're thrust into a world where Doris' previously glossed-over hoarding isn't cute, it is an acting-moment-worthy fulcrum for the film's narrative. It is a strange new world where therapists show up at your house with rubber gloves on to help you sort through your shit. That's unbelievable service. Literally unbelievable.
Needless to say, Doris' plight becomes increasingly more difficult to invest in. Without its director on-side, the script's stabs at emotion don't pay off. Not even Field's Field-esque performance can steer clear of the tonal inconsistencies.
I've got to admit, like Showalter, I'm wedged inconveniently between the two demographics at play here. I can pretty safely say Doris is not going to be a goer for the younger crowd (there is only so many times one can be told that you're too invested in your lesbian knitting circle), and I'm guessing there will be many in the blue-rinse brigade who'll bristle at the film's contrivances - maybe.
Or maybe, the power of Sally Field is not so easily quashed.
★★☆
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