With the indie dramedy A Little Help, Fischer finally gets her very own star vehicle, one specifically designed to show off her many facets as a performer. She plays Laura Pehlke, a high-school beauty that got hitched her equally popular and good-looking boyfriend Bob (Chris O'Donnell) and prepared to live happily ever after. Flash-forward roughly two decades later and she's instead just barely keeping her head above water as she wrestles with a troubled marriage, a tense relationship with her tween son Dennis (Daniel Yelsky) and a general feeling that her life has hit a wall. Things take a turn for the even worse when Bob unexpectedly dies, leaving her in some serious financial and emotional straits. She can't exactly turn to her own family for counseling -- her mother (Lesley Anne Warren) and sister (Brooke Smith) are already convinced she's a loser, while her nostalgia-addled father (Ron Liebman) is more interested talking about his past than her present. The only person that does seem willing to lend a kind ear is her brother-in-law Paul (Rob Benedict), but he's got his own motives for acting as a shoulder to cry on. Back in high school, he worshipped the ground she walked on and still nurses that crush to this day. In fact, one of the reasons he married her sister was to stay close to Laura, which may explain why he's so miserable now. That and the fact that his wife is a stereotypical suburban shrew.

As anticipated, Fischer seizes the opportunity of her own showcase to deliver a nuanced, nicely calibrated performance. Laura is a mess, yes, but the actress is careful not to turn her into a figure of pure pity -- a sob story we can both sympathize with and feel superior to, even when writer/director Michael J. Weithorn's pointed, on-the-nose script provides her with plenty of ammunition to do just that. There's a pronounced mean streak to this character that's always lurked beneath Pam's sweet exterior as well and Fischer seems to enjoy bringing it to the fore. Laura's scenes with her son, for example, effectively demonstrate how parental affection is made up of equal parts pure love and pure exasperation. (Weithron loses major points in this otherwise believable mother/son relationship for employing 9/11 as a bogus plot point. The film takes place a year after that tragedy, apparently for no other reason than to allow Daniel to spread the lie that his father died at the Twin Towers as a way to win the attention and sympathy of the kids at his new school. If you're not prepared to deal with the deeper implications of setting your story at this specific point in time, it comes across as a cheap, extraneous ploy that should have been avoided.)

It's a shame that the characters that orbit the film's star are far more predictably written and performed. Warren and Smith are braying caricatures of the busybody mother and sister respectively, while Benedict's Paul reveals himself to be such a sniveling coward, you actively root for Laura to knee him in the groin after listening to his creepy proclamations of eternal affection instead of finding him appealing. This is one of many questionable life choices that Laura makes throughout the movie, some of which ring true while others leave you wondering if the writer/director understands his central character at all. Fortunately Fischer seems to and the way she's able to successfully navigate the film's contradictions is further example of her skill. If her work in A Little Help doesn't win her any more movie roles, at the very least it will hopefully guilt-trip The Office writing staff into giving Pam an actual story arc next season.

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