B. Patrick
A Little Help (Originally written on November 11, 2011)
Recently on DVD I got to watch A Little Help.
I don’t know the details on this to know if it is a limited release but I’m pretty sure it isn’t straight to video because they had stuff about screenings for it when I went to the MLB All-Star fan fest back in July. Why this movie? I have no idea.
For those unfamiliar with this film, it stars Jenna Fischer, known by most as Pam from the US version of The Office. The poster/cover shows Pam looking confused in bed sheets and I believe highlights the writer/director was someone involved with the creation of King of Queens. Take that as you may, given the factors, I assumed this would be a throwback to the mindless Sandra Bullock movies that she did until they decided to give her an Oscar.
The movie opens with Fischer working as a dental hygienist, but the shots are done like we are her patient! She is arguing with a bird that sits in the office for some reason before she has to leave. When she leaves, she needs to go get her fat, ugly son. They talk about her son being at summer camp but I am distracted with how ugly this kid is. The kid bitches that mom is picking him up and asks “where’s dad?” The only payoff with this hideous kid is if dad is Steve Buscemi. The father is Chris O’Donnell.
Apparently, this woman:
and this man:
create this child:
Maybe the kid doesn’t look as scary in that shot as the rest of the movie but you didn’t see his most common faces which included
and
Looking at his filmography, he was also apparently in the movie where Randy Orton threatens to go to the papers if he has to because Jackson Pollock is doing gay stuff, so he is in a lot of legit work.
Back to the movie, it jumps pretty quickly to Fischer, O’Donnell and their troll going to a family event. Fischer’s character has a psycho bitch sister who is always angry for no reason but sometimes because her husband marks snarky comments, probably because they often show he has to sneak out to smoke weed to be able to handle her. She also has a kid with a Pete Wentz haircut, which is weird because the film is set in 2002 and I don’t remember that from that time period.
The tension between Fischer and O’Donnell blows up because she is suspicious of him cheating while he denies it but does tell her she has gotten fat and ugly, which is odd considering she looks to be in some of her best shape in this movie. He also tells her she has a drinking problem so she solves it by putting down her beer and running out of the house. He chases her and collapses in the street. A big truck comes, so I think maybe it won’t see the Boy Wonder and run him over but instead they are in the hospital with a doctor and dialogue that implies he may have been driving the truck, but I think he was just bitching he had to come back to the hospital so late. O’ Donnell has problems getting too excited (good thing it is just this movie and not real life, because he does TV with LL Cool J! That’s bound to be permanent excitement!) The doctor asks if this happens during sex. Chris O’Donnell knows it does but uses his master thespian skills to skirt around the sexual part but then gets embarrassed when the Fisch points out they haven’t intercoursed in months.
They get back from the hospital and are apologetic but then Jenna Fischer blowjobs Chris O’Donnell to death.
During the transition, there is more highlighting of how her family is crazy and they forced the awkward, ugly son to go to a private school multiple towns over. Jenna doesn’t want to because she must want his pot of gold or something, but they force him. He gets teased the first day of school but in the next scene has lots of friends when Fischer goes to pick him up. A teacher thanks Fischer for her husband’s sacrifice, which makes her like “Woah, do you mean working on insurance or blowjob induced heart attacks?” We find out the movie is a period-piece set in 2002 because it allows the kid to tell his friends his dad died in 9/11.
The movie continues to mainly be more serious and annoying than anything else and then centers any humor that comes up pretty much for the rest of the movie centering around 9/11. Her kid is a weirdo, so she goes and gives speeches at 9/11 ceremonies at the school and sings with wounded soldiers. Meanwhile, crazy sister stops Pete Wentz hair kid from being in his successful band because he doesn’t know math. This forces her husband to smoke more weed and confess to Jenna Fischer he only married the nasty sister to get closer to Jenna Fischer.
At this point, I don’t remember a lot more of the movie because it is stupid. At some point she goes on a date with some patient who calls her spunky, but then he cuts dinner short to have sex with her while she is fully dressed and tells her to say weird stuff. The ugly kid gets obsessed with 9/11 and is outed when a kid who feels sorry for him invites him to his birthday party and when he can’t shut up about his dad’s sacrifice of getting blowies, he goes to the face painter and gets a 9/11 tribute tattoo. This is seen by some kid that gets dropped off at the party from his old school, seemingly without even knowing anyone there. Ugly kid’s life is over…
[show_hide title=”spoiler”]JUST LIKE THE LIVES OF THOSE IN 9/11![/show_hide]
Jenna misses having an affair with her brother-in-law, which leads to him smoking pot and being ok with it and the movie ends right about there, apparently leading us to believe she is a strong woman now.
Seeing as how I have not been watching many movies lately, I feel guilty that I spent time watching this when there are tons of other good movies I haven’t watched. It showed up from Netflix because I put all the new releases for the week at the top of my queue and somehow wound up with this. It sat around for a while and should’ve gone back but if you have Netflix streaming and want to sit through a boring, unnecessary film, this could be your film!
This column originally started on TheRealTSM in
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