An amusing and heartfelt exercise in boots-on-the-ground feminism, Support the Girls takes place in an unlikely location for such an endeavor: a Hooters-style restaurant where the required uniforms cover about as many square inches as the napkins. Keeping things from falling into the sexist abyss is Lisa, the manager, played by Regina Hall in an unassuming tour de force. With humor, tenacity, and—as a cook tells her even while she’s firing him—a seemingly unending well of generosity, Lisa protects her employees, placates the better behaved customers, and generally strives to establish a basic level of human decency in an environment that screams “problematic.” Speaking of screaming, Support the Girls—written and directed by Andrew Bujalski (Computer Chess)—had my general admiration for most of its running time, then rose a few notches with its finale, in which Lisa and two of her employees (Haley Lu Richardson and Shayna McHayle) indulge in some cathartic caterwauling from a rooftop. Each woman screams in a different way, for different reasons, reminding us that feminism, as a principle, may seem simple enough, but living it out in the trenches of 2018 America takes everything that someone like Lisa has, and more.
