Door to Door

Door to Door This earnest movie about a door-to-door salesman with cerebral palsy (based on the true story of Bill Porter) could have been cloyingly sweet, but a sense of humor and the clear, unpretentious performance of William H. Macy keep it from drowning in sentiment. Door to Door follows Porter from when he first gets his job (by convincing a skeptical sales manager to give him the worst route the company has) in the mid-'50s, to his brief retirement in the late 1990s, when door-to-door salesmen became outmoded by catalogs and the Internet. The depiction of how Porter became part of the lives of his customers may feel a little pat, but the portrait of Porter himself--particularly how his persistent independent spirit was also a wall between him and others--is honest and affecting. Also featuring Kyra Sedgwick and the great Helen Mirren as Porter's mother. --Bret Fetzer
William Macy, ...