Natural Selection: Movie Review

10:37 AM PDT 3/20/2011 by John DeFore

Writer-director Robbie Pickering's comedy won top honors at SXSW for its refreshing portrayal of a Christian woman, played by Rachael Harris, who embarks on a road trip with her extremely conservative husband's rebellious, out-of-wedlock son.

AUSTIN -- A purposely hyperbolic vision of escape for a character shackled by marital and religious constraints, Natural Selection trades some emotional engagement for laughs without rendering its heroine's crisis uninvolving. Its distance from realism and deliberately flat, Middle-America production values may limit theatrical potential, but a landslide of awards here at South by Southwest -- it won not only the jury and audience trophies for best narrative, but two acting awards and nods for screenplay, editing, and score -- can't hurt prospects for this debut feature by writer-director Robbie Pickering.