The capsule assessment of this Michael Showalter film (trailer) starring Sally Field, has it exactly right: see it for Field’s outstanding performance though much of the rest drifts toward the unexceptional.
Its story of an aging woman—a wallflower and a hoarder—who falls for a much younger, hipper man, embraces the standard Hollywoodish dichotomy between hopes and realities. That dynamic isn’t confined to the June-November romance, it also characterizes the play’s more serious side, the family pressure on Doris to clean out the house she and her mother lived in and move somewhere smaller and more manageable.
The young man, John Fremont, is played amiably by Max Greenfield, and Tyne Daly is Doris’s long-time loyal friend Roz. Peter Gallagher is convincingly smarmy as a self-help guru.
Some of the best moments come as Doris struggles to bridge the generation gap. When Roz’s 13-year-old granddaughter (played charmingly by Isabella Acres) introduces her to Facebook, Doris finds the path to inside information about John. She pretends to be a fan of his favorite technopop band—Baby Goya and the Nuclear Winters—and they end up at a concert together. Doris’s interactions with Baby Goya (Jack Antonoff) and his mates are hilarious.
In the situations with twenty-somethings, Doris sticks out not just because of her age, but because she is a true original. She sticks out everywhere. Nevertheless, for a while, anyway, it seems as if the decades between 1975 and 2015 whirled past her and the younger generation has now come back around to where she’s happening again.
In short: Field is great and the rest is harmless—“a simple, delightful little human comedy. You know, like life itself,” said Tulsa World reviewer Michael Smith.
Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 85%; audiences: 95%.
