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 Doorfollows  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