All the world’s a Hooter’s in this sharp look at sisterhood from writer-director Andrew Bujalski<\/b>
\nSmile, be attentive and flirty \u2014 but not too flirty \u2014 and call a manager if things get out of hand. These are the basic rules for being a waitress at Double Whammies, the \u201csports bar with curves\u201d at the center of \u201cSupport the Girls,\u201d and this chicken-wing emporium becomes a handy metaphor for women making their way through the patriarchy in writer-director Andrew Bujalski\u2019s observant and trenchantly funny new film.
While the movie is simultaneously a day-in-the-life farce, a cri de couer for working-class women and a testament to the strengths (and the limitations) of created families, it is more than anything an opportunity for the great Regina Hall to shine in an all-too-rare leading role. She makes Lisa, the manager at Double Whammies, hilarious and heartbreaking and irksome; we admire this character\u2019s strength and her loyalty to \u201cher girls,\u201d but we also understand that her problems aren\u2019t entirely the fault of other people.
Those other people give her plenty to contend with, though: she\u2019s got a crew of 20-something waitresses dealing with dramas of their own, a piggish boss (James LeGros) making her life difficult, a would-be burglar stuck in the air vents (and knocking out the cable that supplies endless ESPN to the bar\u2019s dozens of big-screen TVs), and a recalcitrant husband, not to mention an abused employee who needs legal fees and the impending arrival of ManCave, a national chain restaurant poised to put Double Whammies out of business.
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Lisa and her employees are doing their best to get through the world, and you see how they\u2019ve resigned themselves to flirting their way past obstacles. When Lisa needs a sound system for a car wash, for example, she sends Danyelle (hilarious newcomer Shayna McHayle, aka rapper Junglepussy) to sit through a home-theater demo with Jay (John Elvis), the married A\/V salesman who dotes on her. Danyelle is explicit up front that this is going nowhere, and he is not to touch her, but her attention is enough to make Jay putty in her hands.
But \u201cSupport the Girls\u201d isn\u2019t a movie about female manipulation; it\u2019s about women being stuck in low-paying jobs where their dignity faces routine assault. (It\u2019s telling that the one customer quick to defend the waitresses from insults is a butch lesbian played by comedy vet Lea DeLaria.) The Double Whammies staff could be waitresses or staff sergeants or flight attendants or stock brokers; all the world\u2019s a Hooter\u2019s, and even the Commander in Chief feels entitled to grab them.
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King gets to run a full emotional gamut as Lisa; she\u2019s the kind of boss you want in your corner, but also the kind that you have to occasionally remind to mind her own business. She lets us see the thousand daily paper cuts this woman has to endure on her soul, and we see the fragile interior behind her sparkling Southern charm. (The film is set in a featureless Houston strip mall.)
It\u2019s a dynamite ensemble overall: Haley Lu Richardson (\u201cColumbus,\u201d \u201cThe Edge of Seventeen\u201d) walks away with much of the movie; waitress Maci has the kind of infectious energy that would have made her an ideal sorority rush chair, yet it never comes off as fake or forced. She\u2019s so in charge of her own vivacity that it becomes her shield against a harsh world. Brooklyn Decker pops in for one devastating scene as a ManCave recruiter, packing every line with hard-won cynicism.
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Cinematographer Matthias Grunsky, a longtime collaborator of Bujalski\u2019s, exploits the Texas flatness and the endless span of roadside retail. (The sound design never lets us forget that the highway is never far away, with cars and trucks endlessly whizzing by.) Grunsky knows when to go hand-held \u2014 a confrontation with a car-wash customer in the parking lot, for instance \u2014 but he and Bujalski aren\u2019t afraid to lock down for long takes, which these performers know exactly how to fill.
It would be easy to underestimate \u201cSupport the Girls\u201d in the same way that people might roll their eyes at the hard-working women who toil in these \u201cfamily-friendly,\u201d d\u00e9colletage-centric eateries, but there\u2019s a desperation behind these smiles, and a moving story being told in a brightly-lit, music-blasting atmosphere. Sit at the table, and let these women tell you about their lives.<\/p>\n

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Similarity rank: 1.1<\/div>\n

Sentiment rank: 1<\/div>\n

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