Feeling her life spinning out of control, a widow (Jenna Fischer) drinks too much and gets entangled in a series of bizarre lies in order to take care of herself and her 12-year-old son (Daniel Yelsky).
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.
O'Donnell's character isn't the only relative that we and Fischer's Laura come to resent (although she at least finds opportunities to sneak away for cigarette and beer breaks).
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.
"A Little Help" settles for familiar and modest payoffs. It's not much. Yet Fischer clearly relishes the chance to play someone who's a demurely reckless mess.
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.
