Review of Cyrus (2010) by Christopher S — 21 Jun 2011

The marketing for this movie is terribly misleading.Which was obviously the point after watching the movie. Bottom line, if you found the Trailer funny (like I did) then stop there and don't waste your time with the actual movie because that's the last time you will find anything remotely funny involving this movie.

I went into this film expecting an edgy, funny film of one-upsmanship between a man who's fallen in love and the far-too-attached son. I mean face it, the premise is filled with possibilities, and the trailers suggested we should go in ready to laugh. Not so. What I witnessed was a film that tossed aside every comic opportunity and settled instead for a kind of after school special about coming to terms with your mom's boyfriend. Hugely disappointing to see such good actors wasted on what could have been a sharp and insightful story, filled with opportunities for humor.

I heard John C. Reilly give an interview where he said there was a great deal of improv in the film and he was grateful for the opportunity to create his own vision. Nice for him, but boring for the audience -- the dialog was clichà (C)d and unfocused, the story rambled along with no dramatic or comedic tension, and all that improv forced some very clumsy editing. Not saying the acting wasn't good, it was. Marisa Tomei did the best she could with a character who had no back story, no convincing explanation for why she's fallen in love with the drunken goof peeing in the bushes at a party, no exploration of why she's created this dependent son or why she's had no one in her life since her son was born 21 year ago! It was enough for the film makers that she was hot, and they pretty much left us to figure out the rest. John C. Reilly is a great actor who I absolutely adore and find hilarious, even here at times he finds a way to make you laugh but I'm really tired of seeing ugly losers score the great looking girl, it doesn't happen in life unless you're rich and this guy is not only not rich he seems almost unemployable. 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 at times at his facial expressions, I assume that was definitely not the intended audience reaction). Catherine Keener plays his ex-wife, and there was an opportunity to draw a parallel between his dependence on her and Jonah Hill's dependence on his mother. They dropped it like a hot potato. Too interesting, I suppose.

This film had great opportunity to be better. It was rather short, had they added about 20 minutes more to develop the characters and include more funny jokes, along with more disputes with John and Cyrus, it could have been so much better. "Cyrus" ended up being more of a romantic-dramady, than a straight forward comedy.