‘Hello, My Name is Doris’ kinda sweet, sorta sad

As costumed by Rebecca Gregg, Sally Field in “Hello, My Name Is Doris” resembles a bag lady Iris Apfel whose accessories testify more to a hoarder’s mania than to an artist’s innovations.

Doris’ oddball fashion choices include large, floppy hair bows; saddle shoes with poodle skirts; and two pairs of glasses, worn at the same time, in lieu of bifocals. These accouterments demand attention even as they provide a protective cover for the woman within them, an accounting-department drone who has lived her entire adult life with her mother in Staten Island, a ferry ride away from the heartbeat of the city.

The movie opens at the sparsely attended funeral of that same mother, an event that provides an opportunity for the reluctant Doris to emerge from her risk-free cocoon. The catalyst for Doris’ wary interest in self-liberation, however, is not a loss but a presence, i.e., newcomer John Fremont (Max Greenfield, 35 years younger than Field), the fresh-faced art director at the fashion business where Doris is a longtime and more-or-less ignored employee. “I like your glasses,” John tells the stunned Doris, in the elevator, during their first meeting. “Are they cat-eye glasses? They’re cool.”

Adapted from a short film titled “Doris & the Intern” by Laura Terruso, “Hello, My Name Is Doris” — scripted by Terruso and director Michael Showalter (a writer/ Sally Field is a lovestruck eccentric in “Hello, My Name Is Doris.” actor/et cetera whose credits include the screenplay for “Wet Hot American Summer”) — is much like its title character: Its cutesypie surface hides a dark interior. On one level, this is a you-go-grrrl tale of unlikely self-realization, as Doris discovers she is not just accepted but admired for her “good weird” appearance and personality by John and his hipster Williamsburg associates. (These include an electronic-music artist named Baby Goya, played by Jack Antonoff, who tells Doris: “You’re a true original.”) On another level,

Doris’ growing romantic yearning for John, who doesn’t recognize the depth of his new older friend’s emotional attachment, is a silent howl of desperation from someone suddenly resentful of her lifelong irrelevance and approaching extinction.

“Hello, My Name Is Doris” makes an interesting companion piece to Noah Baumbach’s recent “While We’re Young,” which told a similar comic/dramatic story of age-meets-youth within a trendy Brooklyn milieu. If “Doris,” with its May-december possibilities, is potentially more daring, it’s also less satisfying in its safe resolution.

“Hello, My Name Is Doris” is exclusively at the Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill.

COURTESY OF ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS