The smartly observed small moments of life and their minor tragedies make up the plot of Andrew Bujalski’s working class dramedy Support the Girls. Regina Hall is the caring manager of a Hooters knockoff invested in running the business and taking care of the emotional and financial dramas of her girls, all while balancing her crumbling marriage and possible firing.
Most of the problems are male centered: bad customers, boss, boyfriends and husbands. Hall handles all of them with a generous attitude, perseverance and good humor.
Support the Girls exists between never truly funny and never fully dramatic. It lives in the middle ground of charming, poignant and aching wonderment. Appropriately, it ends with a rooftop primal scream of sisterhood.
Director Bujalski keeps Support the Girls close to his mumblecore beliefs. It is loose and episodic and only dramatic enough to seem like real life.
Support the Girls is a low key movie that is shaggy and dramatic as it needs to be.
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