Film-o-Rama Review by August Meyer
This is one to think about. Jeff Who Lives At Home takes its relatively meager resources (a budget at around $7,500,000) and creates something wonderful. There's something to be said for a film that draws upon it's audience's emotions like this one does. Somehow it manages to be an effective comedy, drama, and philosophical journey. Think a less funny, more serious Big Lebowski.
I can't think of a more perfect role for Jason Segel. He plays the title roll in this friendly smack to the face of a film. Jeff, as you may have guessed by this point, lives at home. He's a thirty-something year old slacker who spends his days smoking pot, watching infomercials, and stinking up his mother's basement. It's this intense isolation that leads him to become the constantly ponderous thinker we see in the movie. His mother's basement evolves from a sanctuary for all things mediocre to a cannabis-filled underachiever's think-tank. The film starts out with a monologue describing the significance of M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs". Jeff meditates on how a string of seemingly random events can culminate into something beautiful and life changing. Jeff's life is this jumble of randomness, and he's looking for some meaning to make something out of it. That's exactly what happens when his mother sends him on an errand to fetch some wood glue. This carpenter's adhesive is the catalyst that sets into motion the chain of events that will give Jeff exactly what he's looking for, and is what drives this stunning reflection on the significance of the lazy mediocrity rampant in our day and age.
The cast is a kind of a dream team. Ed Helms and Jason Segel play off each other with a great combination of fierce animosity (mostly on Helms' part), and nearly-forgotten brotherly love. As Jeff's "successful" brother Pat, Helms' character sees himself as above the ever-positive pothead philosophy his little brother spouts. He does a wonderful job of attempting to hide his fascination with Jeff's undying optimism, and just barely masking the bitter depression he harbors over what his life has come to. The emotional highs and lows of Helms' performance are really something. Susan Sarandon plays the pair's at-the-end-of-her-rope mother. She longs for the days where her family was together and her boys were cute. "What happened?", she reminisces to a friend at her nine-to-five grind. Sarandon does an excellent job of conveying the feelings of a forlorn mother who just wants to see her children, and herself, happy again. The subtle romance her character take part in is a nice touch, too. Judy Greer is a pleasant surprise as Pat's miserable housewife. Like Sarandon's character, she's just kind of done with it all. She's tired of the passive aggressive relationship she shares with her husband, her small apartment, and the person all of these things have turned her into. She's a scene-stealer, and a shining example of the brutal honesty that makes this film great.
Directors Jay and Mark Duplass put a smile on the faces of the audience I was apart of, and I imagine the same thing can be said for audiences across the country. The only thing I can really find to complain about the film is how brief it's stay on the screen is. It runs at a meager hour and twenty three minutes, but it really does make the most of it's time in front of audiences. It's a feel-good movie that strays away from Hollywood fluff, speaks to the quiet dissatisfaction of our generation, and toys with the idea that just maybe there's some sort of reason to the randomness of how we all fly about the universe. See it while you can.
