Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. This series of "critic's notes" is chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connect them to the riches of Scarecrow's collection.
The movie is offered in non-linear chapters with headlines such as "The Year with the Good Sandwich" and "The Year with the Baby," and if there's something about that that conjures up the titles of episodes of Friends, that may not be too far from what's going on here. There's plenty of cutesy self-consciousness about Sorry, Baby, and a certain kind of sitcom tidiness, even if the movie carries at its core a traumatic event. Writer-director Eva Victor has charted a serio-comic approach to this trauma, a wry and roundabout mode that seems to echo its main character's sense of bewildered embarrassment and confusion about the whole thing.
Here's the word "spoiler," so you know to stop reading if you prefer, but it really isn't too much of a spoiler to say that Agnes (played by Victor) is sexually assaulted by an older colleague at grad school, something that (because of the movie's spiraling approach to chronology) we learn about only halfway through the story. And even then, it isn't depicted, or even said out loud; instead, Agnes describes the experience to best friend Lydie (Naomie Ackie), a remarkable scene in which some words don't need to be spoken for the weight of a revelation to be felt.
I wish more scenes in Sorry, Baby had that diamond-like focus. You have to sift through a few too many minutes of TikTok humor and L.L. Bean catalogue layouts to get to the good stuff, although when you do, it has the tang of something genuinely original. Much of that has to do with the aforementioned embarrassment and confusion contained in Agnes, and in Victor's performance, a truly oddball turn—dazed, quizzical, mumbly. Victor is in some ethereal zone between Bud Cort in Harold and Maude and Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, and the performance itself carries the film through its more pedestrian passages.
The movie's been getting rapturous reviews, which feels generous. There are too many familiar notes hit, including a sequence featuring John Carroll Lynch that feels like a storytelling cliché instead of the random-encounter milestone it's meant to be. The scene in which Agnes finds a kitten is a heart-melter, but even that plays like one more bit in a routine, in the manner of a stand-up comic's collection of observational comedy. Skillfully done, but just a little facile.
July 11, 2025
