Mark and Jay Duplass have made a name for themselves on the indie circuit with the newfound “mumblecore” movement, with Mark achieving a measure of fame with the cult television show The League. By combining more improvisational style comedy with tiny budgets, the Duplass brothers have made a handful of small budgeted indie films that have earned them somewhat of a name in Hollywood. Enough that Mark would get cast in a similar television project and they’d be handed a couple of movie stars, Jonah Hill and $7 million to make Cyrus.
John (John C. Reilly) is a divorcee in an awkward place in his life. His ex-wife and best friend Jamie (Catherine Keener) is about to get remarried, amongst other things, and he never handled their divorce as well as she did. He’s still single, lives alone and kind of trudges through his life. Then a chance meeting with Molly (Marisa Tomei) at a party changes it all. As they enter into a relationship, one problem hovers above it all: attached-at-the-hip son Cyrus (Jonah Hill).
The film follows John and Molly as they progress throughout their relationship, from an initial one night stand to a monogamous relationship, but along the way Cyrus and John find themselves at odds. John wants a normal relationship with Molly and Cyrus wants his abnormally close relationship with her to never end. It becomes an interesting battle of wills between the two begins in earnest.
In a normal film this would be filled with all sorts of slapstick gags, etc, and this is much more of a dramatic interaction than a comedic one. It would be more clichéd to turn this into a slapstick farce but the Duplass brothers do something that’s infinitely harder: make this into a character driven drama. It requires a lot out of both its cast as well as its writer/director team and for the most part they deliver quite well.
The film’s success starts with Tomei and Reilly, as awkward looking a couple in a romantic comedy as it gets, who have tremendous chemistry with one another. They don’t look aesthetically pleasing but they work well together; these are two people that are damaged souls finding that somehow, someway they work together. The film wouldn’t work if they didn’t work wonderfully together. There’s a delightful awkwardness at first that blossoms into a fully realized relationship. If this aspect of the film didn’t work then the gamesmanship of sorts between Cyrus and John doesn’t mean as much.
This is the film’s weakness as Hill and Reilly don’t seem to be on the same page. Cyrus is meant to be in a bit of a state of arrested development and yet he seems more like a serial killer in the wings as opposed to a son with a much stronger than normal attachment to his mother. Hill seems to be trying to get away from his roots as being the overweight guy with all the best lines in comedies into a more fully realized character. It’s a step in the right direction, as Hill has more talent than his status as the overweight friend to any number of comic actors, but it’s a bit awkward because he seems to be in a different film than everyone else.
This is a lead role for Hill, mostly relegated to being the sidekick, and as such his style has to be altered for it. He can’t just be his usual self, with great timing for one-liners, and he picked the right vehicle for it. There’s lots of comedy to be mined from this but Hill seems to be more creepy than comic; it’s hard to feel anything but uneasy around a guy who you strongly suspect has a collection of animal skulls hidden somewhere. There’s a fine line between awkward and serial killer that Hill crosses in the wrong direction and stays there.
Cyrus, though, manages to work despite this because at its heart there’s a strong love story behind it. The Duplass brothers have found a cult audience so far and this is a step up in terms of budget and ambition. While it never found the audience lesser films did it’s certainly worth a viewing.
The one thing Blu-ray has done to independent cinema is that it makes micro-budget films look that much worse due to the quality level of the Blu-ray format. Cyrus may have been low budgeted but it has a first rate look that belies its low budget status.
Q & A with the Duplass Brothers is a quick segment with the brothers as they interview each other, and their children, where they discuss the differences between shooting on the micro-budget scale of $10-20 thousand with 10 crew members against the $7mm budget and 100 crew members with this film. There’s also a Behind the Scenes with the two at the South by Southwest Film Festival.
Two Deleted Scenes are included but don’t add much back into the film.
The film’s Theatrical Trailer and a Sneak Peak are included, as well as Fox Movie Channel Character profiles of Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly. A Music Mash Up featuring the two is included as well.
If the Duplass brothers end up being close to the Farrelly brothers in terms of being comedic directors, Cyrus will be the film that bridged them from the low budget world of the indies to studio pictures.
Fox Home Entertainment presents Cyrus . Written and Directed by Jay and Mark Duplass. Starring John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei, Catherine Keener, Matt Walsh. Running time: 91 minutes. Rated R. Released on Blu-ray and DVD: December 14, 2010.
