It's a movie for everyone whose life has been thrown off-course, out of whack, or simply not turned out the way they planned it. In other words, it's a movie for everyone, period. Set in suburban Long Island in the summer of 2002, with the psychic wounds of 9/11 still fresh, A Little Help is a story that takes a comic, searching and profoundly empathetic look at a few pivotal months in the life of dental hygienist Laura Pehlke (Jenna Fischer)-an ordinary woman whose life suddenly flies off the rails-and her heroic efforts to re-establish a sense of security and normalcy for herself and her son.
It's not that Jenna Fischer is miscast in "A Little Help.'' It's that she's mis-everything else: misused, misdirected, misanthropic.
– Wesley Morris,
Boston Globe,
28 Jul 2011
fresh:
This is one of the smarter, more honest scripts to be filmed in quite some time. And Jenna Fischer gives one of the smarter, more honest - and vulnerable, and tough - performances by an actress on the big screen in an even longer stretch.
– Steven Rea,
Philadelphia Inquirer,
28 Jul 2011
rotten:
The film suffers from an uncertain tone, playing serious situations for laughs while supplying Laura with a drinking habit and a hair-trigger temper that come across as problems rather than endearing foibles.
– Colin Covert,
Minneapolis Star Tribune,
28 Jul 2011
fresh:
A Little Help doesn't dazzle, and you can pick at its parts, but Fischer's performance gives the movie a sense of romantic weariness that lingers. Life is a series of disasters to be weathered, no matter how cute you are.
– Tom Long,
Detroit News,
29 Jul 2011
rotten:
The next chapter in Laura's story might be something worth rooting for, but here's hoping she has a different writer penning her lines.