It’s not that much of an exaggeration to say that her Doris—a 60-ish, never-wed office drone whose sheltered life spent on Staten Island with a fat, lazy cat, a demanding invalid mother and decades of hoarded clutter—is a somewhat spikier but no less sweeter invention in the mode of Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp. She even dresses the part in what used to be Salvation Army toss-offs but have since been reclaimed in this age of shabby-chic as vintage wear. We laugh at her foibles, applaud her small victories, agonize over her questionable choices, share her growth pains and allow her to tug on our heartstrings. In a society that too often devalues its older citizenry, Doris’ arrival is as welcome as the first crocus of spring.
If this low-budget indie directed by Michael Showalter, who shares writing credit with Laura Terruso, is somewhat shakier in its plotting than Field is with her choices onscreen, it matters little considering that basically she is the movie. Not that there aren’t a parade of talented younger faces in the cast, most likely eager to share space with the film’s star, including Kumail Nanjiani (“Silicon Valley”), Rich Sommer (“Mad Men”), Natasha Lyonne (“Orange is the New Black”) and Beth Behrs (“2 Broke Girls”).
Neither does it suffer from being a sort of gender-inverted version of the glossier and ultimately shallower “The Intern” with Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway. While De Niro enhanced his mainstream material by putting aside his usual short-fuse persona to become a gentlemanly fount of wisdom, “Hello, My Name is Doris” has a welcome rawness that partly derives from making do with fewer resources.
The perennially youthful Field’s defiance of stereotypes starts early as she experiences a coming of age and a late-life crisis simultaneously. The film opens with her mother’s funeral, an initially anxiety-inducing event that soon allows Doris to embrace new opportunities, aided by a talk given by a self-help guru (Peter Gallagher in a cameo, offering such cheesy advice as reading “impossible” as “I’m possible”). They soon arrive in the form of John Fremont (Max Greenfield, in a refreshingly kinder and engaging change of pace from his Schmidt on TV’s “New Girl”), her company’s new art director who's about half her age. While forced together in a crowded elevator, a smiling John innocently tells Doris that he likes her fancy cat-eyed specs. That is all it takes to zing her romantic strings and spark a sexual awakening.
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