Jay and Mark Duplass may hate the term "mumblecore", but their low budgeted indie films have become synonymous with intuitive, sharp comedies unafraid to explore relationships with real depth. Through a handful of films they've managed to avoid falling into the trap laid by Hollywood movies, which usually means cutting emotional corners to reach some sort of unearned happy ending. Not even a step into the mainstream with 2010's Cyrus, really Jonah Hill's finest performance of his young career, could steer them into the land of cliche.
No, it took Jeff, Who Lives At Home for the Duplass's to fall off their game. A heavy handed and mostly incoherent fable about destiny, the film is randomly funny thanks mostly to its charming cast. Jason Segel is Jeff, a lovable stoner going nowhere in life, 30 years old and living at home with his mom, Sharon.(Susan Sarandon) For a guy stuck in the present, Jeff is obsessed with the future, looking for clues to his destiny anywhere he can find them, drawing inspiration from M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. On the other end of the spectrum is his older brother, Pat(Ed Helms), an aggressive ball of nervous energy with a perpetual chip on his shoulder. When we first meet him in the midst of an early mid-life crisis, he's fighting a familiar verbal war with his wife(Judy Greer) over his irresponsible spending and chronic inattentiveness.
A mistaken phone call from a person looking for "Kevin", combined with his mother's desire to see him actually leave the house, sends Jeff on a citywide trek full of randomness and extreme coincidence. Jeff sees the controlling hand of fate in everything: a pick-up game of basketball, a delivery truck, whatever. The signs seem to be guiding him somewhere, and it's directly into his brother, leading the two on one epic day full of strange occurrences and twists of divine providence. Segel and Helms make for a pretty powerful comedic duo, but the lackadaisical plot does them no favors. Helms in particular thrives in an environment of rapid fire comedy, which this certainly isn't. It lounges somewhere in between, struggling to create avenues for Segel's gift of physical humor. He's just a naturally funny guy, and yet that is stunted a little bit here by all the mystical mumbo jumbo.
Where the film finds the most solid footing is in the exploration of Pat and Linda's marriage, and we see again why Judy Greer is one of the most underrated actresses working today. Why isn't she a bigger star? Their relationship is never given enough screen time, but in just a few minutes we can sense how lived in their home feels , and how they've both become too comfortable to even bother getting angry with one another. This is the Duplass sweet spot, navigating those uncomfortable emotional corners most films won't dare tread. We could be talking about this as one of the year's great movies if only their marriage had been the centerpiece, rather than just a small part of the broken puzzle.
Because Sarandon needed something more to do than just sit on the phone, a pointless storyline about a secret admirer in her office is tacked on. The only real good coming out of it is that we get to see Rae Dawn Chong in something relevant again. At least the conclusion has some energy to it, a crescendo of chance, dramatic revelations and even a life or death moment. Too bad it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and feels like a desperate attempt to have everybody walk away happy and properly schooled. The Duplass's have traded away authenticity in favor of accessibility, a bad deal by any measure.
