Hello, My Name Is Doris – written and directed by Michael Showalter. Screwball Comedy. 90 minutes Color 2016.
★★★
The Story: A spinster forgotten in the accounting department of a modern firm imagines herself the mate of the handsome new executive.
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All three stars go to Sally Field and Tyne Daly her confessor in a mating dance Field does at work which she should not do there or any place else. But comedy consists of what one ought not to do, does it not?
Field is 70 and still at the top of her game. What blooms from Sally Field is hope, doubt, and resolution. What does not bloom from her is sexual repression and self denial. She does not suffer long an inability to speak her mind.
These, however, are the background of her character, for she has just been released by her mother’s death in Staten Island, where Field had looked after her for a thousand years. Suddenly there’s this guy in the elevator.
Good.
What is odd about the character is the way she dresses. And here the problem starts.
For why has no one particularly until now noticed that Doris dresses like a rummage sale. That’s why nobody notices her.
And yet, now, all at once, she is considered hip because of her clothes. She goes to the theatre and is taken up. She goes to a disco and she is taken up. She is photographed for a fashion magazine. Maybe the guy is taking her up too.
The problem in all this that the clothes the costumer has put her in and that Field herself has culled from wardrobe look calculatedly bold, deliberately outré. They become more funny than the actress who wears them.
This character, Doris, would have dressed herself in whatever came to hand, cheaply, in hand-me-downs, and color-blind cardigans. Technicolor emblazons the costumes. They seem deliberate instead of unconscious.
Sally Field’s performance cuts through this difficulty as though it did not exist. She is one of our most welcome and wonderful actors. She has won two leading actor Oscars and has not had a leading role in a film for 20 years. You will take to her, as always, and admire her skill. She has one of the great qualities of politicians and actors: likability. Catch up to her and enjoy.