Butler's Cinema Scene

Rachael Harris, best known for playing Ed Helms’ mean-as-a-snake significant other in the first “Hangover,” is the main reason to see “Natural Selection,” a comedy about a shy Christian wife who slowly blossoms on a cross-country road trip.

Harris is good enough here to have earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for best actress (the film itself won the jury award at last year’s Kansas International Film Festival, which is how it comes to be playing at the Glenwood Arts). But the rest of Robbie Pickering’s comedy has to hustle to keep up with her.

Harris plays Linda, the quiet, obedient wife to Abe (John Diehl), a religious conservative who since learning that Linda is barren has refused to have sex with her. Because, like, having sex with no chance of procreation would be a sin.

This lack of intimacy leaves poor Linda always on the brink of a sexually frustrated meltdown. Abe, on the other hand, has for years been satisfying his needs by donating to a sperm bank.

Linda learns of this only after Abe has suffered a probably fatal stroke on one of his visits to the clinic. Ever the good wife, she schemes to find out if her husband’s deposits have ever been put to use. Her hairbrained idea is to arrange a meeting between Abe and one of his offspring.

Which is how she finds herself driving from Texas to Florida to confront the twentysomething Raymond (Matt O’Leary),  a hairy, criminally-inclined oaf. Clearly, this apple dropped far from the tree.

Raymond finds Linda’s piety irritating, but since he only recently escaped from a county work farm and needs to get out of town quickly, he accepts her offer to drive him back to Houston.

“Natural Selection” is an odd couple comedy. Raymond is profane, surly, lazy and unrelentingly stupid. Linda is unsophisticated, sweet and sincere.

He gets her drunk. She provides mothering he’s never had. They have misadventures.

Can love be far behind?

Yeah, that one’s a stretch. But Harris is so good at selling her character that she single-handedly lifts the film from a mostly negative to a slightly positive experience.