Mama's Boy

It's clear that Jon Heder is a controversial comic actor. 'Napoleon Dynamite' was a great favorite among young people, some of them of course, and established immediate cult status, but is dismissed by many. Heder is a comedian who is more than willing to play the fool. His performances are effortless; they just flow out of him naturally. He becomes whatever embodiment of absurdity he's handed, be it a geeky high-schooler ('Dynamite'), a preening skate star ('Blades of Glory'), or a lazy young adult who's turned into an a-hole due to his fear of facing life on his own ('Mama's Boy'). Unfortunately Heder's embodiments are so successful some audience members can't separate the actor from the role, and they turn on him. 'Variety's' stringer critic in the only mainstream review you can still find online says, completely inaccurately, that Heder is simply doing a reprise of his 'Napoleon Dynamite' role in'Mama's Boy.' The consistent panache with which Heder impersonates obnoxious geekiness every time doesn't mean it's the same character. Each of those three has his own quite separate motives and personality.

But like I said, Jon Heder is an acquired taste, one many seem incapable of acquiring. People find Jeffrey's up-front selfishness (again, not meant to be taken seriously) so repugnant, reactions to the whole film become so totally negative right off the bat that comments show a misreading of practically every main character, except maybe Anna Faris' Nora Flanagan. She is a caricature too, but nobody seems to mind or even notice. But like Daniels' Mert, she's nice to Jeffrey until she can no longer be, and Jan (Ms. Keaton) can never be any other way with him -- that is, till tough love finally forces her to ask him to move out.

Actually this is very nice stuff -- deceptively so: viewers seem to mistakenly suspect something much more negative and ugly about to happen, but if you read Jeffrey carefully, his meanness is only skin deep. It's rare that any movie, let alone what appears at first a rather dark comedy, is so full of human decency. After all, even Jeffrey tries to do harm, but winds up not really succeeding. It's because of this prevailing decency that Jeffrey can convincingly come to his senses and become in his turn a good person, like Jan, Mert, Nora, and Seymour.

This is an age-old function of comedy: to reunite people and bring about redemption. Despite a strong tendency revealed on this site to reject this movie and declare it a clinker, it could never be that with a cast of this caliber doing very good work. And it's not a clinker at all, just a low key comedy that, if you tune into it, has some good laughs and leaves you with a good feeling.

Jeffrey, the useless slacker who's living off his mother at 29, is Heder's most darkly conceived character so far. It's essential not to take him too seriously. It's all just a pose, though a pretty sad one, if taken seriously. Otherwise, everyone delivers fine performances, and they play it pretty straight. Ana Faris is a superb comic actress, but she's astonishingly real and natural in her scenes with Jeffrey. Her performance allows us to see that he could be attractive, if he would stop being weird and using people. Diane Keaton also is real and natural as his mother, and Jeff Daniels, a splendid and supple actor in a role that could be made maudlin or a caricature, also turns out to be a good guy, who treats Jeffrey as if he were normal, hoping that he will turn out to be in the end. This is a comedy about redemption. Of course the 'Say Anything'-mimicking ending is a little too easy, but hey, this is a comedy, and a pretty simple one. Eli Wallach's old man tells Jeffrey "I'm 91 f---in' years old": this great, tireless character actor actually is that age in real life. And Wallach has acted in six more movies since this one was made two years ago. What a guy! And overall, what a great cast! And let's not forget to mention the always interesting Mary Kay Place.

This film seems to have been virtually dropped from the Web's records. It was reviewed when it came out briefly in theaters, but now all you can find is a scattering of mediocre and superficial DVD reviews and, because it promises to keep a record of all the films that come out, the one in 'Variety.' Unfortunately the 'Variety' critic, like too many of the Users on this site, did not take a very close look at what he was writing about, and his observations are of very little use. Fortunately there are a few who recognize that this is, though not a great piece of work, a quite entertaining and watchable one, in which good actors give winning, natural performances, and Heder again shows his special fearlessness and ease at embodying a comically repulsive (but underneath not unappealing) young man.

I thought this was an excellent movie. There is lots of potential from the big names in this film (Eli Wallach what an actor). Jeff Daniels though played his role terribly.

Some say it is a bit of a copy of Failure To Launch and Mr Woodcock. Failure To Launch is a romantic comedy and Mr Woodcock is crap. This is so much better. It also seems to aimed at an older audience then just teenagers. I think for Tim Hamilton's first directing job it is excellent

Its just disappointing that Warner Bros. have pushed this film out of the limelight. It is quite a good film and better then most in the "teenage" genre.

8/10

...except for Jon Heder. This guy tanked the entire movie.

The plot sounded entertaining. A 29 year old slacker son(Heder)still lives with widowed mom (Keaton)who happens to meet a new love (Daniels). Slacker son is jealous and anxious to lose his comfortable life and tries to sabotage the relationship. He also meets a girl(Faris).

I really liked the performance of Daniels and especially Faris but whoever casted Hader would be better of selling hot dogs at the beach. Heders performance is annoying, which would be a good thing since he plays an annoying guy, problem is he is to bad an actor to loose this act making this guy likable in the finale. At the end you still wish you can personally punch the guy in the face and you're upset about the end. In the future every movie with this guy will be a no go for me!

'What the hell did I just watch????' Those were my closing thoughts after I subjected myself to one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. Some movies are bad. Some movies suck. But there's only one movie that's horrible enough to claim the title worst movie ever made: this movie.

But just how bad is it? I'm glad you asked. I can sum it up as 93 of the longest minutes of my life. The movie just wouldn't end. I'm sure it didn't help that I was looking at the clock every ten seconds. It might even be a be a benefit in that way. Say you only have 93 minutes to live. Hell, sit through this colossal mess of a film and then seconds will stretch on like years.

What the problem that is wasn't funny? Sort of. Was it funny? No. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that there were no jokes. Some movies aren't funny, but at least they make an attempt to be. This movie didn't even try. It's like the producers just slapped together words in a certain order for a 'script' (I use that term very loosely for this movie) and then cast well-respected actors to earn back it's budget.

Which brings me to my next point: the actors. Diane Keaton is a previous Oscar-winner who's starred in classic films such as 'The Godfather,' 'The Godfather Part II,' and 'Annie Hall.' Now she's doing this kind of garbage? There must not be much work out there. Same goes for Jeff Daniels. I wouldn't consider him a great actor, but he's been in some solid films over the years. And Eli Wallach? You appeared in one of my favorite films of all time in 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.' I guess you don't tread too far away from unfamiliar territory, because this is film is UGLY (for all the wrong reasons.)

I'm going on too long about this film. It's already wasted too much of my time. My only hope in writing this review was to scare away potential viewers. To warn them of the dangerous, life-scarring, torturous, agonizing, cruel experience that would await. How anyone could rate this movie about a 3 is beyond me. They either 1) accidentally rated the wrong film 2) worked on the film (though that's not something to be proud of) or 3) are on drugs of some sort (maybe that will somewhat salvage this mess.)

If you watch this whole movie, start to finish, you deserve some type of reward, my friend. If you can sit through it twice, my God, you must be inhuman.

Hey guys, I don't understand why everybody is knocking this film. I didn't think it was great, but it was good. I first saw Jon in his breakout film Napoleon Dynamite, and yes, it was pretty funny. He played a geeky guy in that movie, and a lot of people found his character kind of a geek in this movie. However, I liked him in this movie, probably because I was a geek in high school and I kind of bonded with his character. However I did not live at home with my Mom til I was in my 30's.

Jeff Daniels, well, you either liked his character or you didn't. I personally liked his character, he plays the kind of character that you love to hate. Diane Keaton, I thought was brilliant as the Kool-Aid Mom. She's the kind of mother that every kid wished they had. Anna Faris, it's funny, because I'm used to seeing her in comedies like the Scary Movie series, however, I loved her playing the straight character for once. It's great to have another good upcoming star.

This movie was pretty funny, however it did have a serious side, the storyline was okay, the acting was pretty good. I wouldn't buy this movie, but I liked watching it.