Writing Quirky Titles Is Becoming Difficult, Guys, So Here's "Cyrus"

I don’t have that much to say about “Cyrus,” possibly because it’s been out forever and probably because I just don’t have much to say, but I feel obligated by the powers of the Internet to give it a paragraph or two, for form’s sake. So, what will I say? This was a grown-up version of mumblecore (which, as you may remember, is a movement based around informality and almost voyeuristic plots and camerawork, so I’m not even sure grown-up mumblecore is possible, but whatever), done by directors whose names I can’t look up because I’m writing this away from a computer, but I think they were the dudes behind “Humpday;” anyways, people with strong mumblecore street cred. By this point, the word “mumblecore” is starting to sound funny in my head, so I’m jumping paragraphs for sanity’s sake.

The descriptor grown-up is applied here because these guys got to play with a trio of established professional actors, all of whom I happen to admire: John C. Riley, doing his best lovable everyman, Marisa Tomei, nothing at all like her character in “Treme” but still really good, and Jonah Hill as her really creepy and clingy son. The plot, in true mumblecore fashion, concerns the mundane: John goes to a party to try and get out of a post-my-wife-divorced-me-and-is-getting-remarried funk and meets Marisa Tomei, and they hit it off and see each other a few times and everything looks bright and sunshiny (and the movie’s already twenty minutes in and pretty funny; sequences with John trying to meet women at the party are unbearably funny in the most awkward ways), and then along comes Jonah/Cyrus, Marisa Tomei’s twentysomething-year-old son. He’s eerily mature, uncomfortably so, and then he starts messing with John. This is where the movie takes off and gets weird: John and Cyrus play mind games as John and MT’s relationship builds and prospers, and it’s all fun and awkward games until people start getting truly upset, then the movie goes and resolves everything a trifle predictably and we go home. So, what makes people want to see it? Charismatic actors being likable or really unsettling (I like John C. Riley even more having seen “Cyrus”), some inspired moments of uncomfortable humor, and the pleasure of voyeurism that the entire mumblecore movement taps into: other people are funny and their problems are worse than mine right now! But at the same time, we’re all really similar deep down inside and it could easily be them in the audience and me on the screen! Of course, it’s an illusion, especially when the Big Names get involved (I don’t think John C. Riley actually sublets crappy apartments, but I could be wrong), but it’s well done. So, “Cyrus” isn’t an instant comedy classic in the vein of early Apatow, nor is it a beloved modern cult classic like “Sarah Marshall” or “Harold and Kumar,” but it’s much more enjoyable than you’d think, provided you can stomach/laugh at uncomfortable moments. And it had the power to cheer me up after a nasty day, which is what movies are supposed to do, thus reaffirming my faith in the magic of film during this summer of sparse pickings.