Hello, My Name is Doris (2016)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on April 29, 2016 @ tonymacklin.net.

Hello, My Name is Doris provoked me into going into a subject I usually avoid.

There are some issues where "discretion is the better part of valor."

Oh, the hell with valor. And discretion.

For a long time I've been aware of a lapse in many women writers. Obviously, it's not universal. [Barbara Hall and Siobhan Byrne O'Connor are strong exceptions.] But too often women writers make their male characters say and do things that they would never say or do. They force-feed their male characters false dialogue and behavior. They want the character to say something, so they make him say it. In action, he becomes a puppet.

Four out of five times, I can tell when a woman has written a television show, because of telltale, phony lines or phrases. He would never say that. He would never do that.

[Eons ago I learned a lesson. In a story I tried to make a female character commit suicide. But she wouldn't do it. She just wouldn't do it, unless I forced her. Instead she turned off the alarm clock - her husband had a business appointment in the morning. It was a small, snide gesture, but it was the character's choice. Not mine; mine wasn't true to the character.]

Hello, My Name is Doris suffers from loss of credibility at the end. The 95-minute feature has been expanded by screenwriter Laura Terruso and director/writer Michael Showalter from Terruso's 9-minute student short film, Doris & the Intern.

Hello, My Name is Doris is about the infatuation a 60-something woman, Doris (Sally Field) has for a 30-something man, John (Max Greenfield). Most of the way, it hits its target audience. It has a weird charm. The movie lives on the edge of embarrassment, but has a sort of smart credibility to its amusing absurdity.

Sally Field can chew granola with the best of them, but it is Max Greenfield who provides the necessary charm and credibility that help make her believable.

Often when one is watching a film that is moving along effectively, he fervently hopes that it doesn't blow it at the end. But at the end, Terruso and Showalter sacrifice John's credibility and the film collapses. It is delusional.

John becomes aware of betrayal, but it doesn't effect his behavior as it should. What world does he live in? Instead of trying to repair what it has cost him, he stays in the rut Terruso has dug for him.

Trust - male or female - is important to all of us. But it's almost irrelevant in the film.

My favorite active film critic is Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post. She and I were both disappointed by the ending. She wrote, "The film's open-ended finale, while optimistic, feels both too tidy and lax at the same time."

I might substitute "contrived" for "too tidy," and "hokey" for "lax."

The ambiguity is too unbalanced, because it truncates John's behavior. John is sacrificed to cheap wish-fulfillment.

"Hello, My Name is John. And I've become a pawn."

© 2000-2023 Tony Macklin