Where to watch A Little Help
2 Stars
The film tries too hard. It wants so desperately to be an indie darling that it emulates the look and feel of the packaging, but misses completely on the content. Jenna Fischer’s character mopes around the entire movie and acts as a punching bag for the others. She is never empowered and nothing seems to exact any amount of change out of her. There’s a lot of fighting and screaming that go nowhere, which doesn’t matter anyhow as there’s little to be invested in on either side of the arguing. We’re simply not giving anything or anyone to care about here. Bob doesn’t even die until twenty minutes in, I suppose this is an attempt at showing us what a crappy marriage they had before, but I’m not sure anything really changed for Laura after his demise. He was vacant from both her and Dennis’ lives for the most part.
The most interesting scenes are with the characters surrounding Laura. Rob Benedict gives a great performance as the most likable character, Paul, Laura’s brother-in-law and quasi love interest. Even the slimy lawyer that represents Laura in the malpractice suit is more interesting. With Michael J. Weithorn (King of Queens creator) at the helm both writing and directing I had hopes that this would be a little funnier and a lot more touching. As it stands I could have used A Little Help getting through this snoozefest. The actors aren’t given enough material to sink their teeth into and the film seems to wander aimlessly without merit. If you want to see a film that wanders aimlessly with merit, check out Hesher, which is the level I think A Little Help tried to aspire to.
Director: Michael J. Weithorn
Stars: Jenna Fischer, Chris O’Donnell, Daniel Yelsky