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"FacebookPinterest\n\n Natural Selection won a buttload of awards at South by Southwest last year, which didn&amp;#39;t do a whole lot to allay my glum hunch that I might be in for 90 minutes of hipster snark at fundamentalist Christianity&amp;#39;s expense. Then there was my wife&amp;#39;s reaction to the poster art: &amp;quot;Oh, does that ever look indie. &amp;quot; It wasn&amp;#39;t a compliment.\n\n But writer-director Robbie Pickering&amp;#39;s debut feature about a sunny Bible Belt idealist (the invaluable Rachael Harris) who goes astray and decides not to regret it is actually a lot better than that. Funny for sure, it&amp;#39;s also uncynically fond of and impressed by its true-believer heroine. Even though things do turn cutesy and maybe a leedle self-satisfied toward the end, it&amp;#39;s hard to get too cranky about it.\n\n When we meet her, Linda White (Harris) is a happy Houston wife and devout churchgoer with just one blemish on her bliss. Namely, her husband Abe (John Diehl) hasn&amp;#39;t slept with her once in their 25-year marriage, because the purpose of sex is procreation and Linda is infertile. However, that hasn&amp;#39;t stopped Abe from having sex with himself, something his better half learns when he topples over while flogging the dolphin at the clinic where he&amp;#39;s been a regular\u2014hell, fanatical\u2014sperm donor all this time. In the ICU and presumably not long for this world, he begs her to find and bring him a kid he&amp;#39;s sired: Raymond (Matt O&amp;#39;Leary), now in his early twenties and living in Tampa.\n\n Dutifully hopping into her car\u2014to her, what Abe&amp;#39;s been up to amounts to cheating on her, but the &amp;quot;obey&amp;quot; part of &amp;quot;love, honor and obey&amp;quot; settles that hash\u2014Linda tracks down a surly dude who only decides to concede he&amp;#39;s Raymond and hop a ride with her to Texas because the Tampa cops are making things hot for him. He figures he can steal the kook&amp;#39;s wheels pronto and get back to his interesting life as a total loser.\n\n But thanks to her compelling good-heartedness, it doesn&amp;#39;t work out that way. Instead, Mr. White Trash and Ms. God&amp;#39;s Will start to bond, and...well, what do you think could happen? Meantime, Linda&amp;#39;s pastor and brother-in-law (Jon Gries) has set out in pursuit, not knowing that the clock&amp;#39;s he&amp;#39;s racing just might be Linda&amp;#39;s revivified biological one.\n\n Odd-couple road movies aren&amp;#39;t the world&amp;#39;s freshest turf, so give Pickering credit for mostly convincing us to ignore that. (One nice thing about directors known for award-winning commercials is that keeping the pace lively isn&amp;#39;t a problem for them; among other virtues, the movie is edited with uncommon wit.) Still, he couldn&amp;#39;t have done it without his two lead actors, because O&amp;#39;Leary is real good\u2014though more fun before his sensitive side starts to peek through\u2014and Harris is a wonder. Linda&amp;#39;s eyes never stop asking &amp;quot;Do you want Christ with that?&amp;quot;, but she isn&amp;#39;t a caricature of benighted beliefs. It just happens that making the best of things is also her way of making the most of them."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/tom-carson-natural-selection>