Movie Summary of Cyrus by Michael The Moviegoer
CYRUS = ***
“Not Miley”
“Cyrus” is a movie that seems soft and vulnerable on the surface, but is full of prickly edges as you get closer. John C. Reilly plays John, a man with such low self-esteem he’s been unable to talk to women for seven years. When he looks in the mirror, he sees Shrek! So he is certainly caught off-guard and happily surprised when the beautiful Molly, played by Marisa Tomei, begins flirting with him at a party. She starts the conversation with one of the best opening lines ever. “Nice penis” she says when she catches him peeing in the bushes.
It’s not until after their relationship really gets going that he learns she lives with her 21-year old son Cyrus, played here with unusual restraint by Jonah Hill. There always seems to be something offbeat and unnatural about this mother-and-grown-son relationship. Hill’s Cyrus starts out charming and sweet, but gradually becomes more like Stephen King’s Cujo as time goes on. Growling, snarling and scheming to sabotage his mother’s relationship with John at every opportunity.
Directed by siblings Jay and Mark Duplass, this is a sharply written, quietly observed psychological character study of dysfunctional people. The script and the performances had me on edge every minute. But the jerky hand-held camera photography threatened to push me over the edge a bit too much. Someone buy these guys a tripod for their birthday.
DVD Double Feature: If Alfred Hitchcock took at stab at making a film like “Cyrus” it might look something like 2007’s “Joshua”. Vera Farmiga and Sam Rockwell play parents of a is-he-or-isn’t-he-strange young boy who may-or-may-not be deeply psychologically disturbed. In a weird way, Cyrus seems like Joshua all grown up.
Michael The Moviegoer
