Sally Field best part of too-obvious 'Doris'

"Hello, My Name is Doris" is a weirdly off-plumb little movie, one that manages to be condescending and compassionate, knowing and blindered, reassuring and unsettling all at the same time.

Sally Field plays the title character, an accountant with a Brooklyn clothing company specializing in of-the-moment hipster-wear. When a new art director named John joins the team, the meek, frowzily oddball Doris is instantly smitten: She embarks on a full-blown romantic obsession with the handsome young man, enlisting the granddaughter of a friend to help her cyber-stalk. She eventually finds that her own dated, patched-together style merges perfectly with the bohemian thrift-shop aspirations of John's Williamsburg clique.

Directed by Michael Showalter and written by Showalter and Laura Terruso (who first conceived Doris in a student film at NYU), "Hello, My Name is Doris" plays up the title character's self-abnegating shyness virtually to the point of caricature: She's just lost the mother to whom she devoted her life, and has inherited a run-down house in Staten Island cluttered with the detritus of dreams that have collapsed around her like so many dead stars.

Juxtaposed with the cluttered sadness of Doris' life are jokes galore about the wacky ways of the millennials she works with, from the bouncy ball she's forced to sit on at the office (resulting in a gently lascivious sight gag) to a befuddling vernacular in which "sick" and "tight" are compliments.

The tired stereotypes and cultural extremes of "Hello, My Name is Doris" make last year's fish-out-of-water comedy "The Intern" look all the better for its low-key, observant humor. In fact, the sheer pitifulness of Doris' self-deception would be downright insulting were it not for Field's delicate performance, in which she subtly transforms from a slump-shouldered mouseburger to something more radiant and at ease.

Max Greenfield brings similar heart and commitment to John, who brims with appealing, un-self-conscious confidence. They manage to develop a human-scaled rapport even within the extremes of a film that pokes playful, if unoriginal, fun at shallow-knowledge workers, LGBT knitting circles and the excesses of artisanal maker-speak. (Tyne Daly also brings wonderful grounding energy to the role of Doris' no-nonsense best friend.)

Fans of Hal Ashby's 1970s classic "Harold & Maude" will no doubt sense some commonalities with the May-December dynamic that drives "Hello, My Name is Doris," although Showalter - best known for co-writing the comedies "Wet Hot American Summer" and "They Came Together" - has a far broader sensibility than Ashby's wistful rue. It's worth wondering what an actress of Field's instincts could have done with a less obvious, more finely tuned character. She finally succeeds in making palpable the heartache at the root of Doris's anxieties, but those moments are almost perfunctory.

"Hello, My Name is Doris" does a good job of portraying the invisibility of middle-aged women, and how their gifts are overlooked by a restless, selfie-absorbed generation. The point could have been made just as well - and its heroine better served - if Doris had been less glaringly pathetic.