Delayed Reaction: Sherrybaby

The Pitch: Maggie Gyllenhaal doesn't get enough lead roles. If she gets one, what kind of awards buzz would that carry?

A recovering drug addict gets out of jail and tries to put her life back together so she can get her daughter back.

A knock that I get in my personal life is that I don't have a lot of empathy. I'm not sure that people use that word right a lot of the time, but I know what they mean by it. I've gotten pretty good at getting around it. I know when to stay quiet about certain topics, and I can make token gestures that show a good-faith effort. Really though, I'm pretty cold in that way. A place where it really comes out is with a movie like Sherrybaby.

Simply put, I hate this character and I don't feel bad for her. I spent the entire movie on everyone's side but hers (Well, maybe not her father's either). I get what the movie is doing. It wants to make Sherry real and flawed. She's had a fucked up life from a young age, and that often leads to her being a fucked up adult. I understand that the point of the movie is that it's showing how much shit she has to go through to be able to make even a marginal improvement.

I don't care. I found the 90 minutes with this character thoroughly unpleasant. Her big accomplishment by the end of the movie is that she didn't kidnap her daughter. Way to go! I don't find her struggle that interesting. She's a liar, she takes advantage of the kindness of others, and she takes every shortcut she can. I need a little more. I'm not going to root for a character just because she's on screen. This is a movie about all the worst parts of Sherry, and it cuts off right as we get her first nascent signs of growth.

Now, I should say that as a character piece, Maggie Gyllenhaal knocks it out of the park. This is a great performance. Gyllenhaal plays Sherry without vanity and attacks her every flaw with gusto. It's crazy to think that she didn't get an Oscar nomination for this the same year that Ryan Gosling was nominated for Half Nelson. Maybe the Academy agreed with me that this was too focused on the warts. No, you know what it was? There must've been too much vote-splitting over whether to vote for her in this or Stranger Than Fiction*.

*Please, just let me have this delusion.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend