Cyrus (Sunday, June 27, 2010) (58)

Cyrus is the latest film from Jay and Mark Duplass, two directors who first made a name for themselves with mumblecore films. Their two major works to this point, The Puffy Chair and Baghead, are both interesting pieces and both fit much more squarely into the mumblecore world than this one does. I think both films have good stuff in them, but they both rather fall apart in the would-be third act as the story goes slightly off the rails.

Cyrus, despite being a much bigger production with bigger stars and a more conventional script suffers a similar fate. It starts out well, if a bit weird, and then turns a corner in the third act that makes the whole thing a bit less than wonderful.

John (John C. Reilly) is a 40-something loser living in LA, still friendly with his ex-wife Jamie (Catherine Keener). One night she gets him to join her and her new fiance at a party. He joins them expecting to have a terrible time, but at the party meets Molly (Marisa Tomei) a 40-something hottie. They hit it off and end up back at his place. After their second date, he follows her home and meets her 20-year-old son, Cyrus (Jonah Hill) who lives with her. Cyrus and Molly have an unusually close relationship that John has to get used to. Cyrus and John begin to resent each other for taking their time away from Molly.

True to their mumble roots, the Duplasses present the film in a very low-budget-looking style. Most of the camera work is hand-held and the score is minimal with basically no fancy cutting or tricks. This adds a nice level or matter-of-factness to the story. The problem I had is that it feels so natural, but the story is pretty inane. There is no way this woman would have a son as weird as Cyrus and would interact with him the way she does. Their characters are a bit exaggerated, I think, beyond the naturalistic skeleton of the film.

John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei are both great and play the more dramatic, more serious parts of the film well. Jonah Hill is a bit too silly for the film, I think. He is very funny at some points (like when he's playing his own techno music for John), but it's too ridiculous at other times (like when he tries to sabotage a wedding). I feel like he doesn't meld well inside the film, but is more of a hat on top of it. It's sorta like Cyrus, featuring Jonah Hill - which is rather annoying.

Again, the film begins well and has some good stuff in it, but I think the last third are a bit of a throw-away. There is not enough time given to several key ploy points, which results in a disorienting series of scenes. This is a shame, because just like with Baghead that was 70% good and 30% dumb, this never reaches that top level it comes so close to.

I really do think the Duplasses have some good stuff going for them. They seem to be able to direct actors well and have a good sense of technical stuff, but they need to work a bit harder on their scripts. It might be OK in mumbleworld to have a sorta scruffy or less-than-perfect script, but in big budget world, this sort of thing stands out in a bad way.

Stars: 2 of 4