Iliza Shlesinger’s Hilarious Texas Homecoming

Texas is a big place that can feel so small sometimes. Just ask comedian Iliza Shlesinger, who clearly gets it. Born in New York, but raised in the suburbs of Dallas Fort Worth, she made her break from the Lone Star State right after high school and never looked back. Well, that part’s not quite true. Her hilarious, perceptive and deeply relatable indie comedy “Chasing Summer” (directed by Josephine Decker) is all about looking back, as her overachieving character Jaime returns “home” after nearly 20 years away to make peace with her past.

No one questions when men do what Jaime did, ditching their families (in this case, MVP Megan Mullaly as her well-mannered mama Layanne and Jeff Perry as her more oblivious dad) to go off and make a career for themselves. As the film opens, Jaime is out saving the world — that’s literally her job, as a disaster relief worker — cleaning up after a tornado in neighboring Mississippi. Without calling attention to it, Decker shoots the scene like she’s got something to prove (when it’s Jaime who’s the one with a chip on her shoulder), swooping through the aid camp in an elaborate, “Touch of Evil”-style oner.

Jaime has just gotten news that her team has been picked to serve in Jakarta next (the “Nobel Prize” of such assignments, she explains), and right after the cut, she receives another shocker: Her boyfriend’s dumping her for a younger woman. They’ve already packed up her stuff. It wasn’t her plan to detour through Dallas and see her folks — Jaime’s been doing her best to avoid them for almost two decades — but now she needs a place to stay.

So begins a familiar “you can’t go home again” story (till now, Reese Witherspoon had a corner on the market) that miraculously doesn’t feel like we’ve heard it before, even if the moral is perfectly clear from the get-go. Something embarrassing happened between Jaime and her teenage crush, Chase (“Smallville” star Tom Welling, to whom time has been kind). She’s been running ever since, never staying in one place for long. Coming back, she’s almost immediately reminded of Chase. He sure has changed, but has Jaime?

Not according to a trio of popular girls from her high school class, whom she runs into at the grocery store. They swear she looks the same. Extrapolating from the way Jaime rides a shopping cart (like a 10-year-old, zooming through the frozen goods section with both feet off the ground), these grocery aisles are like memory lane. Practically everyone she encounters speaks to her with politeness and respect, though none — not even her mom — seem to recognize or care what she’s accomplished career-wise.

“Your nails are scraggly from all that volunteering,” scolds Layanne in her articulate Southern drawl — except Jaime doesn’t volunteer, and her mom’s never understood that. She can’t even keep the places Jaime’s served straight. Being back under her childhood roof is stressful, but not nearly as much as sleeping in tents halfway around the world — or so you’d think. Shlesinger does an excellent job of communicating Jaime’s anxiety (sometimes it feels like she’s playing to the camera, ready to break the fourth wall with a “can you believe these people?” shrug). But we believe that’s the character. Jaime has spent half her life watching herself from a self-conscious remove.

If she’s running from anything, it’s herself, not Chase. Her ex long since moved on with his life: settled down, gotten married, had kids. In Texas, as in most of the country, the majority of folks don’t drift far from home. Jaime’s the exception. She convinced herself she was escaping judgment — cruel rumors that trace back to high school. But that strange mix of nostalgia and ridicule Shlesinger’s script shows for certain Texas customs (big hair, oversized pickup trucks and bladder-challenging beverage containers)? The judgment stems from her/Jaime.

“Nobody’s thinking about high school anymore,” Chase says when he runs into Jaime at the roller-skating rink run by her screw-up of an older sister (Cassidy Freeman). Jaime agrees to help out around the place, but it’s hard not to get pulled back into old patterns. Despite all those years away, Jaime essentially reverts back to her teenage self, accompanying the much-younger Harper (Lola Tung) to a kegger, where she meets a kid, Colby (Garrett Wareing, who comes across like a conscientious quarterback). He’s barely half her age, but more considerate than all her exes combined, so she allows herself to be loved.

Jaime has a lot of sorting out to do while in Texas, and Shlesinger generously allows her character to fumble through it. She’s been responsible for so long, obviously trying to prove herself to people who haven’t given her much thought. That’s a rude awakening plenty of people experience at their high school reunions: The bullies have mellowed, forgetting and/or forgiving themselves for their behavior, while the underdogs go on to become overachievers. Colby explains as much. (He’s handsome, which makes it easy to be aloof. But he’s wise enough to recognize that caring what others think is a curse that people impose on themselves.)

There’s real wisdom to “Chasing Summer,” which Shlesinger and Decker offset with a handful of steamier-than-you’d-expect sex scenes. Jaime resists Colby at first — not for long, really — after which, their physical interplay is presented with her pleasure as the priority. That’s the one element in which audiences might recognize Decker’s hand. Otherwise, the movie bears almost no resemblance to her past work (“Butter on the Latch,” “Shirley,” “Madeline’s Madeline”). Compared to those low-budget marvels, “Chasing Summer” shows all the polish and soul of those glossy studio comedies that result when Judd Apatow picks a comedian and builds an entire project around them. He wasn’t involved here, but the movie still ranks right up there with “Trainwreck,” even giving “Bridesmaids” vibes at times.

You needn’t know Texas to see the truth in it, but if you do, the details certainly add to the experience. Like Mullaly’s jewelry and accent. Or the mercurial weather, which has driven so many from the state. Or the way that coming back is the best way to move forward.