Little Help

Theatrical Release Date: 2011 07 22 (USA - Limited)

UPC: 014381747553

Studio: Image

MPAA Rating: R   Contains:[Profanity, Sexual Situations, Drug Content]

Summary: A widowed dental hygienist gets caught up in a pair of elaborate lies while growing increasingly attracted to her smitten brother-in-law in this comedy drama from King of Queens executive producer Michael J. Weithorn. In the wake of 9/11, Laura Pehlke (Jenna Fischer) finds her life falling apart. Not only is her husband, Bob (Chris O'Donnell), having an affair, but lately their son, Dennis (Daniel Yelski), has begun displaying all the tell-tale signs of tween rage. Then, just when it seems like things around the Pehlke household couldn't get any more tense, Bob drops dead due to a heart condition that he intentionally kept secret for fear of divulging his extramarital fling. Suddenly, Laura's overbearing mother, Joan (Lesley Ann Warren), and pushy sister, Kathy (Brooke Smith), are insisting she ship Dennis off to private school and sue the hospital where Bob was "misdiagnosed." Meanwhile, after enrolling in a new school, insecure Dennis tells his classmates that his father was a NYC fireman who perished heroically while rescuing people from the Twin Towers. The two lies snowballing as her stress begins to peak, Laura finds that the only person who seems to sympathize with her plight is Kathy's husband, Paul (Rob Benedict), who harbored a major crush on her back in high school, yet barely registered on her radar. Two decades later, Laura finally notices him. Now the closer that Laura and Paul grow, the more apparent it becomes that they both desire more from their relationship than either of them are willing to admit. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Category: Comedy Drama

Awards: Film Presented – Seattle International Film Festival

Features: Bonus Jakob Dylan music video
Actor interviews
Trailer
TV spot

Little Help

Format: Blu-ray

Release Date: 10/25/2011

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Theatre Wide-Screen

Audio: DHMA null, 2 PCM stereo

Runtime: 109 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Region: Blu-ray region A (North America, Central America, South America, Japan, Taiwan, North Korea, South Korea, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia)

Perry Seibert

The conventional wisdom is that little films about people's everyday problems can't get made anymore, especially if the main character is female. A Little Help proves that conventional wisdom isn't always right. Jenna Fischer stars as Laura, a thirtysomething dental hygienist unhappily married to the handsome and successful corporate real-estate businessman Bob (Chris O'Donnell). She thinks Bob is cheating on her, and when she confronts him about it, he tells her she drinks too much, does a poor job raising their son, and has let herself go. Laura's type-A sister, Kathy (Brooke Smith), intensifies Laura's penchant for self-loathing by always telling her how she's messing up. An unexpected conclusion to the marriage problem surfaces when Bob dies from an undiagnosed heart condition, but that's hardly the end of Laura's troubles. Her moody tween son, Dennis (Daniel Yelsky), tells his new classmates that his dad died in 9/11, and Kathy's easy-going husband, Paul (Rob Benedict), confesses that he's been in love with Laura since high school. Writer/director Michael J. Weithorn has a warm humanity going for him. He loves these characters -- even the most damaged of them, and even when they are behaving at their absolute worst -- and boy can his main character be difficult to like. Fischer is fearless in that capacity; it's not common in a movie to see a mother lose herself to genuine anger and frustration when dealing with a moody child, but there's a brutal verbal fight between Laura and Dennis at one point that best reflects the film's ability to make us confront our ambivalence toward the characters. Fischer benefits the most from the movie's humanism since she has the most screen time, yet all of the actors find a balance where we are quite fond of them for some reasons, and hate them for others. Brooke Smith thrives in this zone, as does Rob Benedict, who turns Paul into an attractive alternative for Laura until you realize that his best feature -- his patience -- might cost him the woman he loves. Although this is Weithorn's first feature film, he's had a long career in television, and that shows in A Little Help's episodic structure. There isn't much narrative momentum, but there is an abundance of interesting, flawed, and complicated characters, and that keeps us engaged in the movie even when the occasional scene feels unformed or there just for exposition. The humanism informs not just the film's style and point-of-view, but its moral as well -- which Weithorn makes explicit in a bittersweet story shared by one of the characters. While A Little Help isn't perfect, the movie works well enough that you'll forgive not only the characters' flaws but the film's as well. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Michael J. Weithorn  Director 
Michael J. Weithorn  Producer 
Michael J. Weithorn  Screenwriter 
Austin Wintory  Composer (Music Score) 
Dena Hysell  Producer 
Joe Gressis  Producer 
Jenna Fischer  Actor 
Chris O'Donnell  Actor 
Kim Coates  Actor 
Lesley Ann Warren  Actor 
Brooke Smith  Actor 
Aida Turturro  Actor 
Rob Benedict  Actor 
Daniel Yelsky  Actor 
Nadia Dajani  Actor 
Sam McMurray  Actor 
Ron Leibman  Actor 
Arden Myrin  Actor 
Lynn Cohen  Actor 
Shari Albert  Actor 
Gracie Bea Lawrence  Actor 
Joy Suprano  Actor 
Jim Florentine  Actor 
Michelle Hurst  Actor 
Miles Williams  Actor 
Sarah Wilson  Actor 
Mark Vincent  Actor 
Markus Goldberg  Actor 
Zach Page  Actor 
Elaine Kussack  Actor 
Sara Kapner  Actor 
Brandon Perler  Actor 
Carla Briscoe  Actor 

Country: USA