Natural Selection 2011

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: The loser junkie and the chaste Christian lady make an odd couple, in an odd film, but the oddity gives way to an effortless, persuasive charm. They give us something to believe in. Read more

Amy Biancolli, San Francisco Chronicle: A coming-of-age portrait of a sweet, innocent, middle-aged Christian woman who bursts through the confines of a sexless marriage. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: Its creator clearly has talent. He simply lacked the resources to make the movie he envisioned. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: Couldn't be more clumsily obvious in its narrative setup or more flavorless in its lo-fi Americana tone. Read more

Alison Willmore, AV Club: It'd be easy to thread this story through with condescension, but instead, it's modest and compassionate, a midlife awakening for a woman long out of touch with her own needs. Read more

Mark Feeney, Boston Globe: [Harris is] the one good thing in "Natural Selection." Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: However gritty this indie comedy may look (cinematographer Steve Calitri seems to be aping William Eggleston's photographs of the American south), it isn't all that different from an Adam Sandler vehicle. Read more

John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter: Modest road-film comedy goes to extremes to liberate its middle-aged heroine from an ultra-conservative household. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: In Harris' hands, Linda is guileless but believable, her smile so worn and wary that it almost hurts to see it. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: [Harris is] the big reason that "Natural Selection" is so engaging. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Credit Pickering's deft script for avoiding the usual cliched speed bumps, though sex and lies are on the menu. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: In the evolutionary spectrum of cinema, "Natural Selection" is like the duck-billed platypus, pretending to be warm-blooded but more than a little fowl. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: A mostly contrived comedy whose only real reason for existence is to provide a platform for Rachael Harris to give a true and lovely performance as a middle-age frump who blossoms among the truck stops and the Motel 6es. Read more

Joe Leydon, Variety: An engagingly offbeat comedy that respects its characters too much to push too hard for easy laughs, even when those characters risk making complete fools of themselves. Read more

Michelle Orange, Village Voice: Natural Selection mixes elements of Transamerica and the recent Higher Ground to tell the story of how a God-fearing fortysomething woman found the greatest love of all. Read more

Logan Hill, New York Magazine/Vulture: I'm still reeling at how high a level of difficulty this film worked at, with its bold tonal shifts, meshing of truly dark material and spastic physical comedy. Read more