Actresses over 40 often complain, or certainly used to, about the lack of good roles for them.  That situation has improved, yet along with the good roles come others that are stupid or misguided, in my opinion, and this is one of them.  The heroine, Doris (Sally Field), is a strange lady whose mother has just died, and she attempts to overcome her loneliness by expanding her social horizons.  That’s all well and good and commendable, but this movie is as creepy as it is uplifting.

Michael Showalter’s comedy-drama follows Doris as she develops a secret crush on the new young guy John (Max Greenfield) in the NYC office where she works, and tries to get to know him as unobtrusively as possible.  By doing so Doris meets, and is accepted by, a whole different group of people than her older friends (Tyne Daly, Caroline Aaron).  This is the best stuff in the movie.

The not best stuff centers on Doris’ wishing to get to know John better, and her fantasies about him.  Audiences seem to think these scenes are hilarious; I found them cringe-worthy and, yes, creepy.  Perhaps Sally Field is selling the cute fantasy to everyone except me, but I kept wondering how the audience would react if Doris were a man, say, Dustin Hoffman, pursuing a young woman, say, Jennifer Lawrence, in the same way.  Creepy.  I’m all for love, in real life and in the movies, but this just felt wrong, all the way through.

I think my reaction boils down to the fact that I didn’t like Doris.  She never seems real to me because she isn’t real to anyone else.  Hair extensions, dowdy clothes and two pairs of glasses at one time (what’s up with that?) define her as someone hiding her own identity.  By the end of the movie she finally becomes her own person, and she seems fifteen years younger.  But that’s too late for me, because I’ve spent too much time with someone I don’t trust.  I would not have made this misguided movie.  ☆ 1/2.