by Ilich Mejía
We interrupt your final Oscar Prediction anxiety and Nathaniel's own awards ballot for a very important public service announcement. Here are ten reasons you must watch Andrew Bujalski's feel-good-wait-nevermind-good-movies-are-complicated Support the Girls on Hulu right away.
Centered around a group of female employees working at a small breastaurant, Girls is unfairly only skirting around the awards conversation so you owe it this much. (We don't make the rules!) The movie gives us a gallery of portraits of too-real day-to-day troubles.
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TEN REASONS YOU MUST WATCH "SUPPORT THE GIRLS"
From the opening scene, the kind nature of the movie and the piles of respect it gives its characters come through quietly, but clearly. Lisa (Regina Hall) and Maci-with-an-i's (Haley Lu Richardson) relationship draws you in even though their initial exchange is vague. That's part of what makes it so meaningful: Lisa doesn't need to explain why she's been crying, Maci knows how to cheer her up. They're more than a work team; they're friends who don't need pages of context to react.
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"Notice how I open my mouth real wide when I laugh?"
Haley Lu's Maci is so sweet that visits to the dentist since the movie's release have gone up by a moderately high percentage I just made up. She doesn't stop there: Maci is good at her job, cares about the people she works with, and ultimately just wants to be loved. It's hard to epitomize innocent, good intentions with cut-offs that short, but here she is sipping on some chocolate milk.
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"I'd kill you."
In that Ira Sachs kind of way, Bujalski builds stakes around the most unlikely scenarios. Making a burger, watching TV, and fixing the cable shouldn't make you bite your fingernails away, but be warned: put on some gloves.
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The movie's gaze is protected by Regina Hall's Lisa, the manager at the Double Whammies where the girls serve a clientele made up mostly of cops and older men. She's protective of her girls—constantly reminding both them and the patrons that she has a zero-tolerance policy for any misbehavior directed towards her staff—and so is Matthias Grunsky's camera. The camera's gaze is always careful not to linger anywhere it shouldn't while making sure everyone else in the frame does the same.
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Speaking of, you don't need (and won't get) a greater reason to watch this film than to watch Regina Hall raise this film's already-spectacular promise. After a run of hilarious Scary Movies and a lead performance in Girls Trip that deserved more attention, it's no surprise that she can juggle likable and complicated like she's a working mom in a Sarah Jessica Parker movie. Her Margaret Keane eyes register the difficulty of leaving your personal life at home and your work problems at clock out. The details in Hall's technique are so uncomplicated that they land with all the plausibility Bujalski's script deserves. We knew this already, but it bears repreating: she's it, baby.
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The bullies in this movie are not broad enough to be villanous, but definitely not harmless. Whenever one appears, you worry less about the girls—they know how to deal with their toxicity—and more about the generation of boys growing up with the possibility of being exposed to men that behave this way without a Lisa to steer them away from that life. The film's title is deceiving, even within the film as the titular support ties back to raising money, but that's not what they're really looking for. The men's money is no good here if it doesn't come with a side of respect.
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The cast is uniformly great, but one of the most pleasant surprises is Dylan Geluga as aspiring Whammies girl Jennelle. The writing colors in the lives of the girls, sometimes managing to use the same crayon no more than once. From her first scene, Geluga informs Jennelle with the insecurity and eagerness-to-please that explain her behavior. A departure from her more privileged anxiety on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, here she is a marketing major trying way too hard to get a job she's clearly overqualified for. It's an on-the-edge performance you want to watch through your fingers sometimes. But you never do.
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"I'm just coming to distract you so my boss can get her work done."
It's criminal we've gone through seven reasons without mentioning this movie is funny because IT'S FUNNY! Danyelle (Shayna McHayle) in particular never loses her sense of humor, even when discussing serious issues like the restaurant's absurd rainbow guideline. The film incorporates important issues like systemic racism and corporate lunacy so organically, like anyone actually living through it would. That it does this with a diverse, talented cast is just the cherry on top. Or the refill on that big-ass beer.
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The script is filled with sometimes tense, sometimes delightful moments. A highlight is the climactic confrontation that crumbles Lisa towards the end. Every scene that precedes it is in this room dictating every word and movement. It's excellent until it's heartbreaking. Before you know it, you're texting your mother-in-law's neighbor's niece to put Regina Hall on that Best Actress ballot. Sure, she's an elementary teacher in Milwaukee, but you never know!
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Movies that are over 90 minutes? See above!* Watch Support the Girls instead.
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*Our PR lady would like for me to tell you that this a joke. We here at The Film Experience are supportive of films of all lengths and sizes. Do keep your primetime dramas under 45 minutes, though. Thanks much!
Support the Girls is now available to stream on Hulu and to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video.