Hello, My Name Is Doris
It has been a few decades, but two-time Oscar-winner Sally Field will probably never live down telling her peers, “You like me. You really like me.”
If her new film Hello, My Name Is Doris is any indication, she may simply have been stating a fact instead of wallowing in narcissism. In the hands of a lesser actress, her disturbed title character would have had viewers laughing at her derisively instead of identifying her torments as their own.
Thanks to Field’s ability to give data entry clerk Doris Miller a consistent sense of dignity, it’s easy to cheer for a character who’d be an eccentric or even annoying supporting character in other films.
If Doris’ fascination with cats and tendency to hoard a half century’s worth of possessions (including several partially used bottles of shampoo) seems a bit off-putting at first, it’s all too easy to see why she hasn’t gotten out much.
In her 60s, Doris has spent all of her adult life caring for her ailing mother when she wasn’t typing. As a result, she’s shy and feels out of place with her considerably younger co-workers. Losing her mother as the film begins only makes the world outside her cluttered Staten Island home seem even scarier.
Two things lift her out a seemingly debilitating funk. First, she meets her company’s new art director, John Fremont (Max Greenfield). He’s a polite fellow young enough to be her son or even grandson, and it doesn’t hurt that he looks as if he walked right off the covers of the romance novels she devours.
Second, her best friend, Roz (Tyne Daly), ropes her into attending a motivational seminar featuring a Tony Robbins clone (played with practiced glibness by Peter Gallagher) whose shallow platitudes seem like calls to arms for the lonely Doris.
If Doris’ attempts to woo John seem quixotic, director Michael Showalter focuses on how her quest ends up liberating her in the process. She attends and actually enjoys going to electronic dance music shows, even if she finds the language “too explicit.”
Doris goes from wearing drab outfits to garb that practically glows in the dark, but seeing her trying to soak up youth culture is far less pitiful that watching her clutching a pencil of John’s that she has pilfered from his tote bag.
Even if John didn’t inspire feelings of intense longing, he’s far more fun to hang around with than Doris’ unsympathetic brother (Stephen Root), who seems more interested in cashing out the family home than in his sister’s happiness.
Field’s baby face and childlike gazes give Doris an innocence that makes her occasionally unsavory actions (like stalking John online) seem less contemptible. She also has a knack for bringing out solid work from her co-stars. Daly can play firm without coming across as abrasive. Root projects just a hint of a heart beneath his mercenary exterior.
The script by Laura Terruso and Showalter (based on Terruso’s short film) occasionally makes the mistake of telegraphing that John’s good manners should not be confused for requited affection. The film might have been just a little funnier and more involving if viewers shared more of Doris’ sense of romantic bewilderment.
Nonetheless, by casting Field, they’ve at least made Doris’ seemingly doomed quest compelling.
Some of those windmills she’s tilting at have it coming.