Hello, My Name Is Doris

Hello, My Name Is Doris stars Sally Field as a lonely, socially awkward, low-level accountant nearing retirement age who gets a last shot at living life to the fullest. We meet Doris right after the elderly mother she’s lived with and taken care of for many years has passed away.  Doris is on the fast track to turning into her isolated, hoarder mother, but she’s still got a ton of repressed spunk looking to come out. With encouragement from her granddaughter, she pursues a fantasy romantic relationship with her company’s new, young, hip art director (Max Greenfield).

I’m always happy to see Sally Field, who’s been away from movie screens for far too long, but this tedious, condescending, underwritten picture barely qualifies as anything more than a shameless showcase for the aging movie star. Both major and indie studios are finally starting to realize the huge undertapped market for films about older people starring older Hollywood stars—just last year we got Blythe Danner in I’ll See You in My Dreams, Lily Tomlin in Grandma, Robert De Niro in The Intern, Al Pacino in Danny Collins, Ian McKellen in Mr. Holmes, Meryl Streep in Ricki and the Flash, Arnold Schwarzenegger in Maggie, and Sylvester Stallone in Creed.  Hello, My Name Is Doris does not measure up to even the weakest of these pictures.

Hello, My Name Is Doris feels exactly like what it is: a short film expanded into a feature by pumping it up with lame comedic shtick and contrived situations.  Field does an admirable job creating an actual human character underneath the layers of quirky idiosyncrasies piled on by the filmmakers.  Director Michael Showalter (of the sketch comedy troupes The State and Stella) and co-writer Laura Terruso (upon whose short this is based) can’t abandon the need to make audiences laugh enough to make this an effective character study. They don’t seem to realize that feature-length rom-coms require a compelling narrative in which to place their wacky protagonist, and a consistent tone that doesn’t undermine the comedy with sentimentality or the drama with cheap, patronizing humor. The paper-thin plot plays like a rough outline of cliché story beats and tired jokes about New York hipsters clashing with aging boomers. The 95 minute picture is packed from front to back with terrific supporting actors who scarcely register at all. Everyone except Field (and, to a slight extent, Tyne Daly as her best friend) phones in their most baseline performance. The intentions behind the movie are obvious. Showalter and Terruso clearly want to tell an endearing story about a character most of us would ignore if we saw her on the street. But the only tools they seem to have at their disposal are the rudimentary devices of improv and sketch comedy. It’s not enough to make a poignant film--only a precious one.