Cyrus

I've been a long time fan of Marisa Tomei and John C. Reiley. Jonah Hill surprised me with his last Netflix series starring alongside Scarlett Johansson so I was curious to see if this film was worth watching.

And I have to see it might be close to one of my favourite films. The combination of humour, honest dialogue and a simple story that works really well makes this a great movie.

It's definitely not for everyone. The story is slow, there's no action, it's mostly talking. But the dialogue is great, a lot of it feels really realistic and there are no cheap cop-outs. Every character feels like a fully fleshed character and it gives every scene weight.

Tomei, Hill and Reiley carry their roles really well. They know how to shift from funny to serious and I can't fault their performances.

So yeah, I'm definitely glad I watched it and wholeheartedly recommend it.

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Cyrus, is a comedic drama that focuses on a divorced man, John (John C. Reilly), meeting the woman of his dreams, Molly (Marisa Tomei), and falling hard for her at a party, subsequently later meeting her grown up son, Cyrus, played by Jonah Hill. The movie was produced by Scott Free Productions, Ridley Scott's production company, and distributed domestically by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Jay and Mark Duplass are the creative minds behind the writing and directing of the picture, and Jas Shelton is the guy responsible for the shaky camera work prevalent throughout the movie. So, now that your familiarized with some of the players lets get down to brass tax.

This movie isn't what many will expect from the trailers, it's a semi- dark, dramedy that examines an unhealthy co-dependency between a mother and her twenty-something year old son, Cyrus. The trailers might have you believe you'll be watching a combination of Step Brothers and The Forty Year Old Virgin, but that isn't really the case. It's definitely much lighter in laughs than I expected, but it exposes some compelling emotional acting from Reilly and Hill that will certainly have critics applauding the "heart" of the film.

Jonah Hill adds further evidence to the case that he wants to break away from being typecast as the chubby, silly, practical joker, and delivers a much more serious performance in this film (Although, I wasn't so easily convinced by his more serious role in this movie, and found myself laughing out loud at times when that was definitely not the intended audience reaction). Reilly is near perfect at bringing vulnerability and desperation to his character, and he further demonstrates his prowess of making an audience laugh on several occasions. Tomei, also gives a memorable performance blending the ability to blindly see no wrong in her son while showing the desire to balance multiple relationships in order to make things work for a forty- something year old single mom (My apologies for how garbled that sounds, but it took too long to get out, so it stays). Catherine Keener turns in a good performance as a supportive ex-wife, that maybe should do better at creating borders between former partners. Matt Walsh, who plays her husband, gave a perfectly sarcastic depiction of the fiancé, who loves his future wife enough to put up with her sometimes idiotic, overly needy ex-husbands constant needs.

Overall, Cyrus, is a funny movie that might not be what moviegoers are expecting to see going into it, but it's emotional ups and downs, interesting subject material, clever improvisation, and great acting are enough to satisfy.

i just watched Cyrus. fantastic film. Every review I've read so far has called this film a comedy. nothing could be farther from the truth. this is a dramatic film with a few (very few) comedic elements. Hill should be recognized for his dramatic role. I didn't find this movie funny at all. I thought it was a very interesting depiction of the new love triangle, between a child, a mother, and her love interest. No doubt this movie took the relationship between single mother and her child to the extreme it represents a dynamic that has existed for at least a generation and is becoming the norm. Jonah, Marisa, and John play these roles with a truth and simplicity that is palpable. They do the subject justice.

Walking down Henry Street on a Saturday afternoon, a particular type of teenager can be spotted. They shuffle from shop to shop, overweight, insecure and accompanied by their Mammy. We now have a name for them; Cyrus.

Sad sack John (John C. Reilly) has never really gotten over his ex wife. His dependency on her, seven years after their divorce, is still obvious, so he decides its time to start looking for someone new. The fact that he has a face thats a cross between Beethoven and Shrek doesn't really help his chances but, against the odds, he manages to find the beautiful Molly (Marisa Tomei). All goes swimmingly at first, until John meets Cyrus. Mollys 20-year-old unemployed son Cyrus is morbidly obese and morbidly dependant on her. Their relationship is a little, shall we say, a little Oedipal. Scrap that, a lot Oedipal. Obviously Cyrus isn't going to take to well to his 'new Dad' but what follows is a subtle masterclass in passive aggressive one-up-manship.

In the wrong hands Cyrus could have been 90 minutes of breast feeding gags and a series of Jackass-style pranks. Luckily for us we are dealing with Jay and Mark Duplass, the golden boys of 'Mumblecore'. For those unfamiliar with the sub genre, 'Mumblecore' refers to a film movement which came out of North America at the turn of the millennium. The films are all made on micro budgets, focus on the relationships of twenty-somethings and rely on improvisation. Basically they are the bastard children of Slackers and Woody Allen's Manhattan.This is the first outing for the Duplass brothers with a reasonable budget and some well known faces. Thankfully they've retained their indie cinema sensibilties and understand the elements that made their early work enjoyable. The dialogue is still mainly improvised and the camera work is still mostly hand-held and makes use of a lot of snap-zoom. Cyrus has been marketed as a comedy and there are laughs scattered throughout, the humour however is closer to the Coen brothers than Judd Apatow. However it's the dramatic elements of the narrative that really give the cast something to get their teeth into. John C. Reilly here echoes his performance in Paul T. Anderson's Magnolia. Both characters are essentially losers, but there's something undeniably likable and sweet about them. Jonah Hill as the titular character really impresses. Fears that he would forever be typecast as a ranty, horny chubby funster are alleviated. He knows how to take a scene forward, he knows when to be serious and most importantly he knows that subtlety can often be far funnier than farce.

Many many people will hate Cyrus and I can see why, the camera work is distracting at times, the subject matter is often dark and the laughs are few and far between. These people probably went in expecting Superbad mixed with some of the fart gags from Step Brothers. For me though, this marks the start of something big for Jay and Mark Duplass.

'Cyrus' is one of those stories about an otherwise promising new relationship threatened by the cumbersome excess baggage one person brings along. In this case that baggage is another human being: a big, fat adult child called Cyrus (Jonah Hill), who, at twenty, still lives with his mother, with whom he's so close it's almost incestuous. With this movie the Duplass brothers, Mark and Jay, who wrote and directed, move away from their former territory of the micro-budget indie film-making group known as Mumblcore, into the realm of an Apatow comedy. Jonah Hill, of 'Knocked Up' and 'Superbad,'as well as the current 'Get Him to the Greek,'is a mainstay of the Apatow stable. This time the schlub he's playing isn't looking to get laid, only to keep his mom from doing so; and he plays it straight this time, not for laughs. This becomes a movie about stasis. And it also remains stuck between two genres. Some sparks fly, and the audience enjoys that, but somehow this ends by seeming something of a missed opportunity. It's neither a trail-blazing drama, nor a riotous comedy. It's just a big tease. The dangerous, obstructive situation is something the filmmakers play with successfully for an hour or so, and then don't seem to know what to do with. And the action just fizzles out.

Mumblecore tends to deal with twenty- or thirty-somethings' mating games and job dilemmas depicted in dialogue that feels rough and improvised. This time things are totally different because the Duplass brothers are working with famous actors. 'Cyrus' keeps things simple, but it's very sure of itself -- except that it doesn't finally decide where to go. It lacks the authentic flavor of Mumblcore, and it's not broadly drawn or funny enough for Apatow; what's more, it lacks the final sense of resolution of comedy. 'Cyrus' has a very forceful series of scenes, but they develop the situation only up to a point.

People laugh watching 'Cyrus,' but it doesn't try to be funny so much as embarrassing. It verges on the Todd Solondz-lite of Mike White, whose funny-peculiar, funny-creepy edge it duplicates; but it lacks White's droll range of characters.

John (John C. Reilly) is a lonely Guy, seven years divorced and still unable to move on. (Reilly gives John his usual warmth, but the writing doesn't flesh him out.) He relies a lot (abnormally much, in fact -- he's odd too) on his ex-wife and co-worker Jamie (the always suave Catherine Keener), who's about to get married. At Jamie's urging, John goes to a party and he meets Molly (Marisa Tomei) and magically they immediately hit it off and she goes home with him. But she leaves in the night. And she does that again when she comes back for a date.

We soon find out why. Molly's unnaturally tied to Cyrus, her large, rotund twenty-year-old son who still lives with her. It's not clear if Cyrus actually does anything; he composes synthesizer music. Even the composing Molly shares in. He is not in school. He never calls his mother "mother," always "Molly."

The awkwardness of the situation keeps you watching. With John at Molly's house for their second evening together, Cyrus goes into the bathroom while his mother is taking a shower, thus signaling their inappropriate (and for John threatening) intimacy. Later that night when John has stayed over and he and Molly are asleep, Cyrus has a screaming fit that awakens them, and Molly runs to comfort him. It's clearly impossible for John and Molly to have private time together. Any sane man would run from this situation, but we understand John's neediness. For seven years he's been alone, and at last he's found a woman he really likes who likes him. What a pity!

Things go back and forth, but there's no real resolution. 'Cyrus' the movie is as narrow as it is effective -- up to a point. The strong, polished actors contrast with the obtrusive in-and-out zoom of the Duplasses' hand-held camera, which here feels annoying and unnecessary. It's an obtrusive holdover from the brothers' previous low-budget indie work. Only here the tentativeness and naturalism are gone. There's something slick about the movie. It has another obtrusive tic: whenever Molly and John make declarations to each other about their feelings, we see them together, but the lines are in voice-over, as if anything romantic is merely tacked-on.

John could hardly be unaware of how huge a threat Cyrus is to his connecting with Molly, and vice versa, but at first John and Cyrus circle around each other politely with nothing untoward happening except the odd disappearance of an essential piece of clothing. But after a while longer something slips and the gloves are off. Cyrus seems dangerous, potentially unhinged as well as incestuous. But he and John are both cowardly lions, not strong or mean enough to go over the top. If one of them did, things might not end up so muddled.

The movie seems afraid to carry things all the way. It lacks an edge, and its resolution is soft and fuzzy. While in this it's like Mumblecore films, which tend just to end, such an approach doesn't suit comedy. 'Cyrus' ventures far out of Mumblecore territory -- without entering anywhere else very definite. The result is far from a total loss. The film-making is solidly competent, the scenes are clearly -- perhaps too clearly -- written; the cast is fine. Cyrus is worthy of our attention, even though it ultimately somewhat disappoints, winding up with neither its dilemma nor its characters fully developed. This would be only a small fraction of a Mike Leigh film, and it would be resolved. The Duplass brothers are lazy filmmakers. They haven't at all got the keen observation of Andrew Bujalski.