Cyrus (2010)

To be sucked in by a movie like Cyrus is a lot like being charmed by that nice young man next door, who you later discover liked to murder and eat hitchhikers. In either case, you’ll end up feeling violated and confused and wishing you’d never met. Oh, and wondering if that’s what happened to your cat.

Cyrus (Jonah Hill) is just that kind of young man. Beneath his polite, if intense, exterior is a manipulative nutcase who has no interest in sharing his momma–with whom he wrestles in the public park, snuggles on the couch, and has impromptu dance parties to the trippy synth-pop he composes. So he is definitely not amused when John (John C. Reilly), a lumpy, frizzy-haired dude stumbles into his mother’s bed.

John has been a shell of a man since his divorce from Jamie (Catherine Keener). While she’s moved on to a new love, he still dotes on her, even allowing her to have the key to his apartment, which she regrets using after she accidentally finds him masturbating. At Jamie’s insistence, John takes his messed-up show on the road to a party where he meets Molly (Marisa Tomei). Their impossible meet-cute (more like meet-ew) involves Molly interrupting a sloppy drunk John with the pick-up line “Nice penis” while he’s peeing in his host’s backyard. Reilly delivers his response: “Are you flirting with me?” with only about half the required level of incredulity.

Their relationship gets going on fast-forward, and it’s only a few days later that John meets Cyrus, Molly’s live-in 21-year-old son. Suddenly, it’s clear why a woman as seemingly smart, funny, and attractive as she is would go for an arrested-development loser like John. She’s still in the process of weaning one. Not literally, although a photo of Molly breastfeeding what appears to be an eight-year-old Cyrus makes you momentarily uncertain. What follows is an often uncomfortable and rarely entertaining competition between John and Oedipus–I mean Cyrus–for Molly’s affection.

Brothers Jay and Mark Duplass are credited with both the writing and directing of Cyrus, but I’m not sure that what they’ve done qualifies in either category. The brothers Duplass are proponents of the indie-film style known as mumblecore, in which non-professional actors improvise movies of low production quality from loosely outlined scripts. As a concession to their first studio film, the brothers hired some real actors. The rest is mumblecore to the core.

Cyrus is sloppily lensed, using jerky zooms and refocuses as the dominant filmmaking style. But what the Duplasses think is cinema verite looks more like dad’s clumsy home movies of your eighth-grade dance recital. It’s not gritty or moving, it’s just annoying. The Duplasses also rely heavily on extreme close-ups, which are supposed to imply both realism and intimacy, neither of which is ever achieved. Need I mention that Reilly, who has a puffy, cratered face like an over-baked muffin top, is not an actor who benefits from the close-up treatment?

It’s a shame to see Reilly so misused because he is more talented than recent entries on his resume (anything co-starring Will Ferrell) would imply. He does have the power to win audiences over with a certain regular-guy charisma, as he did in his role in Chicago, for example. But he, like the extremely talented Ms. Tomei, is forced to play dumb by this thinly plotted exercise.

There are about 15 exciting minutes that start an hour into the film, after John gets wise to Cyrus’ game and decides to step up his own. For these few moments, the film is genuinely funny (rather than just uncomfortable) and the filmmakers blend in a few thriller-film conventions that make you wonder if Cyrus is, in fact, a sociopathic serial killer. It helps that Hill, who sets his steely blue eyes and tiny mouth with determination on his vast face, is quite adept at creepy deadpan.

But that’s just misdirection to make up for the fact that the film actually has no direction.

Cyrus succeeds neither as a dark comedy or a compelling drama. These characters are too seriously messed up to be funny but too cartoonish to take seriously. As a result, the film relies on the sexual perversity of implied incest for both its humor and its edginess. Pardon me if I don’t get the joke.