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75Best known as Ed Helms' nagging fiancée in "The Hangover," Harris is just perfect without ever looking down on Linda's faith in God and herself. Her performance earns a special kind of glory.
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Mar 12, 201250As cartoonish as much of this is, Pickering's story is refreshing in its refusal to paint all Christians with the same brush,
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60This filmed-in-Texas road movie finds a smooth groove between self-conscious quirkiness and broadly played farce.
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63The film works because what it documents is less a transformation and more a return to a former, more natural state for its troubled protagonist.
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75The results are often comical, but Pickering who made the film in tribute to his mother, the real Linda White - imbues them with faith in something, maybe dignity, maybe love, maybe just the simple human urge to keep on moving.
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50Aside from Ms. Harris's performance, the main reason to recommend Natural Selection - very conditionally - is that its creator clearly has talent. He simply lacked the resources to make the movie he envisioned.
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Mar 14, 201275A generous, unguarded performance from Rachael Harris cuts through the cuteness of a quirky premise in Natural Selection.
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40This writer-director still has some evolving to do.
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Mar 13, 201260Natural 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.
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50Snark is not art. 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.
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25The movie has elements of road picture, social satire, and odd-couple romance, but mostly it's about lack of pacing and tone. Somewhere very (very) deep in here is a whiff of "Citizen Ruth," and who knows what Alexander Payne might have done with this material. Instead we know what writer-director Robbie Pickering has done with it, and that ain't much.
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Jun 21, 201250However 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: writer-director Robbie Pickering spends much of the movie mocking his characters' stupidity, then pulls an about-face with a sentimental conclusion that feels unearned.
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88Linda is a truly good woman, and Rachael Harris' performance illuminates Natural Selection.
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70An intriguing and intelligent first effort from indie filmmaker Robbie Pickering, digs deep into the heart of Texas for its soulful tale of small town saints and sinners and a road trip to redemption.